ESSAYS  ON   RUSSIAN   NOVELISTS 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK   •    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO 
ATLANTA'  •    SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON  •    BOMBAY   •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


IVAN   TURGENEV 


ESSAYS 


ON 


RUSSIAN    NOVELISTS 


BY 


WILLIAM    LYON   PHELPS 

M.A.  (HARVARD),  PH.D.  (YALE) 

FORMERLY   INSTRUCTOR   IN   ENGLISH   AT   HARVARD 

LAMPSON   PROFESSOR  OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE  AT  YALE 

MEMBER  OF  THE  NATIONAL  INSTITUTE  OF  ARTS 

AND   LETTERS 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
1911 

All  rights  r curved 


COPYRIGHT,  1911, 
Bv  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 

Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  January,  191 


J.  8.  Cashing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


Co 

VIRGINIA   HUBBARD    CURTIS 

"  Strength  and  honour  are  her  clothing :  and  she  shall 
rejoice  in  time  to  come. 

"  She  openeth  her  mouth  with  wisdom :  and  in  her 
tongue  is  the  law  of  kindness." 


2033262 


PREFACE 

RUSSIAN  fiction  is  like  German  music  —  the  best 
in  the  world.  It  is  with  the  hope  of  persuading 
some  American  and  English  readers  to  substitute 
in  their  leisure  hours  first-class  novels  for  fourth 
and  fifth  class  that  I  have  written  this  book. 

I  am  grateful  to  Mr.  Mandell,  Instructor  in  Rus- 
sian at  Yale,  and  to  Mr.  Noyes,  Professor  of  Rus- 
sian at  the  University  of  California,  for  some 
information  on  the  work  of  contemporary  Rus- 
sians. It  is  a  pleasure  to  record  my  thanks  to  Mr. 
Andrew  Keogh,  Reference  Librarian  of  Yale,  for 
his  unselfish  labour  in  preparing  the  List  of  Publi- 
cations. This  is  certain  to  be  valuable,  for  it  exists 
nowhere  else. 

W.  L.  P. 
YALE  UNIVERSITY, 
Tuesday,  29  November  1910. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

RUSSIAN  NATIONAL  CHARACTER  i 

GOGOL         ........        -35 

TURGENEV    .        .        .        .       .        .        •       .        .62 

DOSTOEVSKI 130 

TOLSTOI       .        .        .       .       V       .       •        .        .170 

GORKI          .        . 215 

CHEKHOV     .        .        .        .        .       ,        .        .        .    234 

ARTSYBASHEV       .        .    "    .        .       .        .        .        .    248 

ANDREEV      .        .        .        .  •     .        .       »        .        .    262 

KUPRIN'S  PICTURE  OF  GARRISON  LIFE        .        .        .    278 
LIST  OF  PUBLICATIONS 285 


ESSAYS   ON   RUSSIAN 
NOVELISTS 


RUSSIAN  NATIONAL   CHARACTER  AS 
SHOWN  IN  RUSSIAN  FICTION 

THE  Japanese  war  pricked  one  of  the  biggest 
bubbles  in  history,  and  left  Russia  in  a  profoundly 
humiliating  situation.  Her  navy  was  practically 
destroyed,  her  armies  soundly  beaten,  her  offensive 
power  temporarily  reduced  to  zero,  her  treasury 
exhausted,  her  pride  laid  in  the  dust.  If  the  great- 
ness of  a  nation  consisted  in  the  number  and  size 
of  its  battleships,  in  the  capacity  of  its  fighting  men, 
or  in  its  financial  prosperity,  Russia  would  be  an 
object  of  pity.  But  in  America  it  is  wholesome  to 
remember  that  the  real  greatness  of  a  nation  con- 
sists in  none  of  these  things,  but  rather  in  its  intel- 
lectual splendour,  in  the  number  and  importance  of 
the  ideas  it  gives  to  the  world,  in  its  contributions 
to  literature  and  art,  and  to  all  things  that  count 
in  humanity's  intellectual  advance.  When  we 
Americans  swell  with  pride  over  our  industrial 
prosperity,  we  might  profitably  reflect  for  a  moment 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

on  the  comparative  value  of  America's  and  Russia's 
contributions  to  literature  and  music. 

At  the  start,  we  notice  a  rather  curious  fact, 
which  sharply  differentiates  Russian  literature  from 
the  literature  of  England,  France,  Spain,  Italy,  and 
even  from  that  of  Germany.  Russia  is  old;  her 
literature  is  new.  Russian  history  goes  back  to 
the  ninth  century ;  Russian  literature,  so  far  as  it 
interests  the  world,  begins  in  the  nineteenth.  Rus- 
sian literature  and  American  literature  are  twins. 
But  there  is  this  strong  contrast,  caused  partly  by 
the  difference  in  the  age  of  the  two  nations.  In  the 
early  years  of  the  nineteenth  century,  American 
literature  sounds  like  a  child  learning  to  talk,  and 
then  aping  its  elders;  Russian  literature  is  the 
voice  of  a  giant,  waking  from  a  long  sleep,  and  be- 
coming articulate.  It  is  as  though  the  world  had 
watched  this  giant's  deep  slumber  for  a  long  time, 
wondering  what  he  would  say  when  he  awakened. 
And  what  he  has  said  has  been  well  worth  the  thou- 
sand years  of  waiting. 

To  an  educated  native  Slav,  or  to  a  professor  of 
the  Russian  language,  twenty  or  thirty  Russian 
authors  would  no  doubt  seem  important;  but 
the  general  foreign  reading  public  is  quite  properly 
mainly  interested  in  only  five  standard  writers, 
although  contemporary  novelists  like  Gorki,  Artsy- 


RUSSIAN  CHARACTER  IN  FICTION 

bashev,  Andreev,  and  others  are  at  this  moment 
deservedly  attracting  wide  attention.  The  great 
five,  whose  place  in  the  world's  literature  seems 
absolutely  secure,  are  Pushkin,  Gogol,  Turgenev, 
Dostoevski,  and  Tolstoi.  The  man  who  killed 
Pushkin  in  a  duel  survived  till  1895,  and  Tolstoi 
died  in  1910.  These  figures  show  in  how  short  a 
time  Russian  literature  has  had  its  origin,  develop- 
ment, and  full  fruition. 

Pushkin,  who  was  born  in  1799  and  died  in  1838, 
is  the  founder  of  Russian  literature,  and  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  overestimate  his  influence.  He  is  the  first, 
and  still  the  most  generally  beloved,  of  all  their 
national  poets.  The  wild  enthusiasm  that  greeted 
his  verse  has  never  passed  away,  and  he  has  gen- 
erally been  regarded  in  Russia  as  one  of  the 
great  poets  of  the  world.  Yet  Matthew  Arnold  an- 
nounced in  his  Olympian  manner,  "The  Russians 
have  not  yet  had  a  great  poet."  l  It  is  always 
difficult  fully  to  appreciate  poetry  in  a  foreign  lan- 
guage, especially  when  the  language  is  so  strange 
as  Russian.  It  is  certain  that  no  modern  European 
tongue  has  been  able  fairly  to  represent  the  beauty 
of  Pushkin's  verse,  to  make  foreigners  feel  him  as 
Russians  feel  him,  in  any  such  measure  as  the  Ger- 

1  Arnold  told  Sainte-Beuve  that  he  did  not  think  Lamartine 
was  "important."  Sainte-Beuve  answered,  "He  is  important  for 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

mans  succeeded  with  Shakespeare,  as  Bayard  Tay- 
lor with  Goethe,  as  Ludwig  Fulda  with  Rostand. 
The  translations  of  Pushkin  and  of  Lermontov  have 
never  impressed  foreign  readers  in  the  superlative 
degree.  The  glory  of  English  literature  is  its  poetry ; 
the  glory  of  Russian  literature  is  its  prose  fiction. 

Pushkin  was,  for  a  time  at  any  rate,  a  Romantic, 
largely  influenced,  as  all  the  world  was  then,  by 
Byron.  He  is  full  of  sentiment,  smiles  and  tears, 
and  passionate  enthusiasms.  He  therefore  struck 
out  in  a  path  in  which  he  has  had  no  great  followers ; 
for  the  big  men  in  Russian  literature  are  all  Realists. 
Romanticism  is  as  foreign  to  the  spirit  of  Russian 
Realism  as  it  is  to  French  Classicism.  What  is 
peculiarly  Slavonic  about  Pushkin  is  his  simplicity, 
his  naivete.  Though  affected  by  foreign  models, 
he  was  close  to  the  soil.  This  is  shown  particularly 
in  his  prose  tales,  and  it  is  here  that  his  title  as 
Founder  of  Russian  Literature  is  most  clearly 
demonstrated.  He  took  Russia  away  from  the  arti- 
ficiality of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  exhibited  the 
possibilities  of  native  material  in  the  native  tongue. 

The  founder  of  the  mighty  school  of  Russian 
Realism  was  Gogol.  Filled  with  enthusiasm  for 
Pushkin,  he  nevertheless  took  a  different  course,  and 
became  Russia's  first  great  novelist.  Furthermore, 
although  a  melancholy  man,  he  is  the  only  Rus- 
sian humorist  who  has  made  the  world  laugh  out 
4 


RUSSIAN  CHARACTER  IN  FICTION 

loud.  Humour  is  not  a  salient  quality  in  Russian 
fiction.  Then  came  the  brilliant  follower  of  Gogol, 
Ivan  Turgenev.  In  him  Russian  literary  art 
reached  its  climax,  and  the  art  of  the  modern  novel 
as  well.  He  is  not  only  the  greatest  master  of 
prose  style  that  Russia  has  ever  produced;  he  is  the 
only  Russian  who  has  shown  genius  in  Construction. 
Perhaps  no  novels  in  any  language  have  shown 
the  impeccable  beauty  of  form  attained  in  the 
works  of  Turgenev.  George  Moore  queries,  "Is 
not  Turgenev  the  greatest  artist  that  has  existed 
since  antiquity?" 

Dostoevski,  seven  years  older  than  Tolstoi,  and 
three  years  younger  than  Turgenev,  was  not  so  much 
a  Realist  as  a  Naturalist ;  his  chief  interest  was  in 
the  psychological  processes  of  the  unclassed.  His 
foreign  fame  is  constantly  growing  brighter,  for 
his  works  have  an  extraordinary  vitality.  Finally 
appeared  Leo  Tolstoi,  whose  literary  career  ex- 
tended nearly  sixty  years.  During  the  last  twenty 
years  of  his  life,  he  was  generally  regarded  as  the 
world 's  greatest  living  author ;  his  books  enjoyed 
an  enormous  circulation,  and  he  probably  influ- 
enced more  individuals  by  his  pen  than  any  other 
man  of  his  time. 

In  the  novels  of  Gogol,  Turgenev,  Dostoevski, 
and  Tolstoi  we  ought  to  find  all  the  prominent  traits 
in  the  Russian  character. 
5 


ESSAYS  ON   RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

It  is  a  rather  curious  thing,  that  Russia,  which  has 
never  had  a  parliamentary  government,  and  where 
political  history  has  been  very  little  influenced  by  the 
spoken  word,  should  have  so  much  finer  an  instru- 
ment of  expression  than  England,  where  matters  of 
the  greatest  importance  have  been  settled  by  open 
and  public  speech  for  nearly  three  hundred  years. 
One  would  think  that  the  constant  use  of  the  lan- 
guage in  the  national  forum  for  purposes  of  argu- 
ment and  persuasion  would  help  to  make  it  flexible 
and  subtle;  and  that  the  almost  total  absence  of 
such  employment  would  tend  toward  narrowness 
and  rigidity.  In  this  instance  exactly  the  contrary 
is  the  case.  If  we  may  trust  the  testimony  of  those 
who  know,  we  are  forced  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
English  language,  compared  with  the  Russian,  is 
nothing  but  an  awkward  dialect.  Compared  with 
Russian,  the  English  language  is  decidedly  weak  in 
synonyms,  and  in  the  various  shades  of  meaning 
that  make  for  precision.  Indeed,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  Polish,  Russian  is  probably  the  greatest 
language  in  the  world,  in  richness,  variety,  definite- 
ness,  and  elegance.  It  is  also  capable  of  saying 
much  in  little,  and  saying  it  with  tremendous  force. 
In  Turgenev  's  Torrents  of  Spring,  where  the  reader 
hears  constantly  phrases  in  Italian,  French,  and 
German,  it  will  be  remembered  that  the  ladies  ask 
Sanin  to  sing  something  in  his  mother  tongue. 
6 


RUSSIAN  CHARACTER  IN  FICTION 

"The  ladies  praised  his  voice  and  the  music,  but 
were  more  struck  with  the  softness  and  sonorousness 
of  the  Russian  language."  I  remember  being 
similarly  affected  years  ago  when  I  heard  King 
Lear  read  aloud  in  Russian.  Baron  von  der 
Briiggen  says,1  "there  is  the  wonderful  wealth  of 
the  language,  which,  as  a  popular  tongue,  is  more 
flexible,  more  expressive  of  thought  than  any  other 
living  tongue  I  know  of."  No  one  has  paid  a  better 
tribute  than  Gogol :  — 

"The  Russian  people  express  themselves  forcibly; 
and  if  they  once  bestow  an  epithet  upon  a  person, 
it  will  descend  to  his  race  and  posterity;  he  will 
bear  it  about  with  him,  in  service,  in  retreat,  in 
Petersburg,  and  to  the  ends  of  the  earth ;  and  use 
what  cunning  he  will,  ennoble  his  career  as  he  will 
thereafter,  nothing  is  of  the  slightest  use;  that 
nickname  will  caw  of  itself  at  the  top  of  its  crow's 
voice,  and  will  show  clearly  whence  the  bird  has 
flown.  A  pointed  epithet  once  uttered  is  the  same 
as  though  it  were  written  down,  and  an  axe  will  not 
cut  it  out. 

"And  how  pointed  is  all  that  which  has  proceeded 
from  the  depths  of  Russia,  where  there  are  neither 
Germans  nor  Finns,  nor  any  other  strange  tribes, 
but  where  all  is  purely  aboriginal,  where  the  bold 
and  lively  Russian  mind  never  dives  into  its  pocket 

1  Russia  of  To-day,  page  203. 
7 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

for  a  word,  and  never  broods  over  it  like  a  sitting- 
hen  :  it  sticks  the  word  on  at  one  blow,  like  a  pass- 
port, like  your  nose  or  lips  on  an  eternal  bearer, 
and  never  adds  anything  afterwards.  You  are 
sketched  from  head  to  foot  in  one  stroke. 

"Innumerable  as  is  the  multitude  of  churches, 
monasteries  with  cupolas,  towers,  and  crosses,  which 
are  scattered  over  holy,  most  pious  Russia,  the  mul- 
titude of  tribes,  races,  and  peoples  who  throng  and 
bustle  and  variegate  the  earth  is  just  as  innum- 
erable. And  every  people  bearing  within  itself  the 
pledge  of  strength,  full  of  active  qualities  of  soul, 
of  its  own  sharply  denned  peculiarities,  and  other 
gifts  of  God,  has  characteristically  distinguished 
itself  by  its  own  special  word,  by  which,  while 
expressing  any  object  whatever,  it  also  reflects  in 
the  expression  its  own  share  of  its  own  distinctive 
character.  The  word  Briton  echoes  with  knowledge 
of  the  heart,  and  wise  knowledge  of  life ;  the  word 
French,  which  is  not  of  ancient  date,  glitters  with  a 
light  foppery,  and  flits  away;  the  sagely  artistic 
word  German  ingeniously  discovers  its  meaning, 
which  is  not  attainable  by  every  one ;  but  there  is  no 
word  which  is  so  ready,  so  audacious,  which  is  torn 
from  beneath  the  heart  itself,  which  is  so  burning,  so 
full  of  life,  as  the  aptly  applied  Russian  word."  1 

Prosper  Merimee,  who  knew  Russian  well,  and 

1  Dead  Souls,  translated  by  Isabel  Hapgood. 
8 


RUSSIAN  CHARACTER  IN  FICTION 

was  an  absolute  master  of  the  French  language, 
remarked:  — 

"La  langue  russe,  qui  est,  autant  que  j'en  puis 
juger,  le  plus  riche  des  idiomes  de  PEurope,  semble 
faite  pour  exprimer  les  nuances  les  plus  delicates. 
Douee  d'une  merveilleuse  concision  qui  s'allie  &  la 
clarte,  il  lui  sumt  d  'un  mot  pour  associer  plusieurs 
idees,  qui,  dans  une  autre  langue,  exigeraient  des 
phrases  entieres." 

And  no  people  are  more  jealous  on  this  very  point 
than  the  French.  In  the  last  of  his  wonderful 
Poems  in  Prose,  Turgenev  cried  out:  "In  these  days 
of  doubt,  in  these  days  of  painful  brooding  over  the 
fate  of  my  country,  thou  alone  art  my  rod  and  my 
staff,  O  great,  mighty,  true  and  free  Russian  lan- 
guage !  If  it  were  not  for  thee,  how  could  one  keep 
from  despairing  at  the  sight  of  what  is  going  on  at 
home  ?  But  it  is  inconceivable  that  such  a  language 
should  not  belong  to  a  great  people." 

It  is  significant  that  Turgenev,  who  was  so  full  of 
sympathy  for  the  ideas  and  civilization  of  Western 
Europe,  and  who  was  so  often  regarded  (unjustly) 
by  his  countrymen  as  a  traitor  to  Russia,  should 
have  written  all  his  masterpieces,  not  in  French,  of 
which  he  had  a  perfect  command,  but  in  his  own 
beloved  mother- tongue. 

We  see  by  the  above  extracts,  that  Russia  has  an 
instrument  of  expression  as  near  perfection  as  is 
9 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

possible  in  human  speech.     Perhaps  one  reason  for 
the  supremacy  of  Russian  fiction  may  be  found  here. 

The  immense  size  of  the  country  produces  an 
element  of  largeness  in  Russian  character  that  one 
feels  not  only  in  their  novels,  but  almost  invariably 
in  personal  contact  and  conversation  with  a  more 
or  less  educated  Russian.  This  is  not  imaginary 
and  fantastic ;  it  is  a  definite  sensation,  and  immedi- 
ately apparent.  Bigness  in  early  environment  often 
produces  a  certain  comfortable  largeness  of  mental 
vision.  One  has  only  to  compare  in  this  particular 
a  man  from  Russia  with  a  man  from  Holland,  or 
still  better,  a  man  from  Texas  with  a  man  from  Con- 
necticut. The  difference  is  easy  to  see,  and  easier 
to  feel.  It  is  possible  that  the  man  from  the 
smaller  district  may  be  more  subtle,  or  he  may  have 
had  better  educational  advantages ;  but  he  is  likely 
to  be  more  narrow.  A  Texan  told  me  once  that  it 
was  eighteen  miles  from  his  front  door  to  his  front 
gate ;  now  I  was  born  in  a  city  block,  with  no  front 
yard  at  all.  I  had  surely  missed  something. 

Russians  are  moulded  on  a  large  scale,  and  their 
novels  are  as  wide  in  interest  as  the  world  itself. 
There  is  a  refreshing  breadth  of  vision  in  the  Russian 
character,  which  is  often  as  healthful  to  a  foreigner 
as  the  wind  that  sweeps  across  the  vast  prairies. 
This  largeness  of  character  partly  accounts  for  the 


RUSSIAN   CHARACTER   IN   FICTION 

impression  of  Vastness  that  their  books  produce  on 
Occidental  eyes.  I  do  not  refer  at  all  to  the  length 
of  the  book  —  for  a  book  may  be  very  long,  and 
yet  produce  an  impression  of  pettiness,  like  many 
English  novels.  No,  it  is  something  that  exhales 
from  the  pages,  whether  they  be  few  or  many.  As 
illustrations  of  this  quality  of  vastness,  one  has 
only  to  recall  two  Russian  novels  —  one  the  longest, 
and  the  other  very  nearly  the  shortest,  in  the  whole 
range  of  Slavonic  fiction.  I  refer  to  War  and 
Peace,  by  Tolstoi,  and  to  Taras  Bulba,  by  Gogol. 
Both  of  these  extraordinary  works  give  us  chiefly 
an  impression  of  Immensity  —  we  feel  the  bound- 
less steppes,  the  illimitable  wastes  of  snow,  and  the 
long  winter  night.  It  is  particularly  interesting 
to  compare  Taras  Bulba  with  the  trilogy  of  the 
Polish  genius,  Sienkiewicz.  The  former  is  tiny  in 
size,  the  latter  a  leviathan ;  but  the  effect  produced 
is  the  same.  It  is  what  we  feel  in  reading  Homer, 
whose  influence,  by  the  way,  is  as  powerful  in  Taras 
Bulba  as  it  is  in  With  Fire  and  Sword. 

The  Cosmopolitanism  of  the  Russian  character  is 
a  striking  feature.  Indeed,  the  educated  Russian 
is  perhaps  the  most  complete  Cosmopolitan  in  the 
world.  This  is  partly  owing  to  the  uncanny  facility 
with  which  he  acquires  foreign  languages,  and  to  the 
admirable  custom  in  Russia  of  giving  children  in 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

more  or  less  wealthy  families,  French,  German, 
and  English  governesses.  John  Stuart  Mill  studied 
Greek  at  the  age  of  three,  which  is  the  proper  time 
to  begin  the  study  of  any  language  that  one  intends 
to  master.  Russian  children  think  and  dream  hi 
foreign  words,  but  it  is  seldom  that  a  Russian  shows 
any  pride  in  his  linguistic  accomplishments,  or  that 
he  takes  it  otherwise  than  as  a  matter  of  course. 
Stevenson,  writing  from  Mentone  to  his  mother, 
7  January  1874,  said:  "We  have  two  little  Russian 
girls,  with  the  youngest  of  whom,  a  little  polyglot 
button  of  a  three-year-old,  I  had  the  most  laughable 
little  scene  at  lunch  to-day.  .  .  .  She  said  some- 
thing in  Italian  which  made  everybody  laugh  very 
much  .  .  . ;  after  some  examination,  she  announced 
emphatically  to  the  whole  table,  in  German,  that 
I  was  a  mddchen.  .  .  .  This  hasty  conclusion 
as  to  my  sex  she  was  led  afterwards  to  re- 
vise .  .  .  but  her  new  opinion  .  .  .  was  announced 
in  a  language  quite  unknown  to  me,  and  probably 
Russian.  To  complete  the  scroll  of  her  accomplish- 
ments, .  .  .  she  said  good-bye  to  me  in  very 
commendable  English."  Three  days  later,  he 
added,  "The  little  Russian  kid  is  only  two  and  a 
half;  she  speaks  six  languages."  Nothing  excites 
the  envy  of  an  American  travelling  in  Europe  more 
sharply  than  to  hear  Russian  men  and  women 
speaking  European  languages  fluently  and  idiomati- 


RUSSIAN   CHARACTER  IN   FICTION 

cally.  When  we  learn  to  speak  a  foreign  tongue, 
we  are  always  acutely  conscious  of  the  transition 
from  English  to  German,  or  from  German  to  French, 
and  our  hearers  are  still  more  so.  We  speak  French 
as  though  it  hurt,  just  as  the  average  tenor  sings. 
I  remember  at  a  polyglot  Parisian  table,  a  Russian 
girl  who  spoke  seven  languages  with  perfect  ease ; 
and  she  was  not  in  the  least  a  blue-stocking. 

Now  every  one  knows  that  one  of  the  indirect 
advantages  that  result  from  the  acquisition  of  a 
strange  tongue  is  the  immediate  gain  in  the  extent  of 
view.  It  is  as  though  a  near-sighted  man  had 
suddenly  put  on  glasses.  It  is  something  to  be  able 
to  read  French ;  but  if  one  has  learned  to  speak 
French,  the  reading  of  a  French  book  becomes 
infinitely  more  vivid.  With  a  French  play  in  the 
hand,  one  can  see  clearly  the  expressions  on  the 
faces  of  the  personages,  as  one  follows  the  printed 
dialogue  with  the  eye.  Here  is  where  a  Russian 
understands  the  American  or  the  French  point  of 
view,  much  better  than  an  American  or  a  French- 
man understands  the  Russian's.  Indeed,  the  man 
from  Paris  is  nothing  like  so  cosmopolitan  as  the 
man  from  Petersburg.  One  reason  is,  that  he  is  too 
well  satisfied  with  Paris.  The  late  M.  Brunetiere 
told  me  that  he  could  neither  read  or  speak  English, 
and,  what  is  still  more  remarkable,  he  said  that  he 
had  never  been  in  England  !  That  a  critic  of  his 
13 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

power  and  reputation,  interested  as  he  was  in 
English  literature,  should  never  have  had  sufficient 
intellectual  curiosity  to  cross  the  English  Channel, 
struck  me  as  nothing  short  of  amazing. 

The  acquisition  of  any  foreign  language  annihi- 
lates a  considerable  number  of  prejudices.  Henry 
James,  who  knew  Turgenev  intimately,  and  who 
has  written  a  brilliant  and  charming  essay  on  his 
personality,  said  that  the  mind  of  Turgenev  con- 
tained not  one  pin-point  of  prejudice.  It  is  worth 
while  to  pause  an  instant  and  meditate  on  the  sig- 
nificance of  such  a  remark.  Think  what  it  must 
mean  to  view  the  world,  the  institutions  of  society, 
moral  ideas,  and  human  character  with  an  abso- 
lutely unprejudiced  mind !  We  Americans  are 
skinful  of  prejudices.  Of  course  we  don't  call 
them  prejudices;  we  call  them  principles.  But 
they  sometimes  impress  others  as  prejudices;  and 
they  no  doubt  help  to  obscure  our  judgment,  and 
to  shorten  or  refract  our  sight.  What  would  be 
thought  of  a  painter  who  had  prejudices  concern- 
ing the  colours  of  skies  and  fields  ? 

The  cosmopolitanism  of  the  Russian  novelist 
partly  accounts  for  the  international  effect  and  in- 
fluence of  his  novels.  His  knowledge  of  foreign 
languages  makes  his  books  appeal  to  foreign  readers. 
When  he  introduces  German,  French,  English,  and 
Italian  characters  into  his  books,  he  not  only  under- 
14 


RUSSIAN   CHARACTER  IN   FICTION 

stands  these  people,  he  can  think  in  their  languages, 
and  thus  reproduce  faithfully  their  characteristics 
not  merely  by  observation  but  by  sympathetic 
intuition.  Furthermore,  the  very  fact  that  Tolstoi, 
for  example,  writes  in  an  inaccessible  language, 
makes  foreign  translations  of  his  works  absolutely 
necessary.  As  at  the  day  of  Pentecost,  every  man 
hears  him  speak  in  his  own  tongue.  Now  if  an 
Englishman  writes  a  successful  book,  thousands  of 
Russians,  Germans,  and  others  will  read  it  in  Eng- 
lish; the  necessity  of  translation  is  not  nearly  so 
great.  It  is  interesting  to  compare  the  world-wide 
appeal  made  by  the  novels  of  Turgenev,  Dostoev- 
ski, and  Tolstoi  with  that  made  by  Thackeray  and 
George  Eliot,  not  to  mention  Mr.  Hardy  or  the  late 
Mr.  Meredith. 

The  combination  of  the  great  age  of  Russia  with 
its  recent  intellectual  birth  produces  a  maturity  of 
character,  with  a  wonderful  freshness  of  conscious- 
ness. It  is  as  though  a  strong,  sensible  man  of 
forty  should  suddenly  develop  a  genius  in  art ;  his 
attitude  would  be  quite  different  from  that  of  a 
growing  boy,  no  matter  how  precocious  he  might  be. 
So,  while  the  Russian  character  is  marked  by  an 
extreme  sensitiveness  to  mental  impressions,  it  is 
without  the  rawness  and  immaturity  of  the  Ameri- 
can. The  typical  American  has  some  strong  quali- 
15 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

ties  that  seem  in  the  typical  Russian  conspicuously 
absent ;  but  his  very  practical  energy,  his  pride  and 
self-satisfaction,  stand  in  the  way  of  his  receptive 
power.  Now  a  conspicuous  trait  of  the  Russian  is 
his  humility;  and  his  humility  enables  him  to  see 
clearly  what  is  going  on,  where  an  American  would 
instantly  interfere,  and  attempt  to  change  the  course 
of  events.1  For,  however  inspiring  a  full-blooded 
American  may  be,  the  most  distinguishing  feature 
of  his  character  is  surely  not  Humility.  And  it  is 
worth  while  to  remember  that  whereas  since  1850, 
at  least  a  dozen  great  realistic  novels  have  been 
written  in  Russian,  not  a  single  completely  great 
realistic  novel  has  ever  been  written  in  the  Western 
Hemisphere. 

This  extreme  sensitiveness  to  impression  is  what 
has  led  the  Russian  literary  genius  into  Realism; 
and  it  is  what  has  produced  the  greatest  Realists 
that  the  history  of  the  novel  has  seen.  The  Russian 
mind  is  like  a  sensitive  plate ;  it  reproduces  faith- 
fully. It  has  no  more  partiality,  no  more  preju- 
dice than  a  camera  film ;  it  reflects  everything  that 
reaches  its  surface.  A  Russian  novelist,  with  a 
pen  in  his  hand,  is  the  most  truthful  being  on  earth. 

1  It  is  possible  that  both  the  humility  and  the  melancholy  of 
the  Russian  character  are  partly  caused  by  the  climate,  and  the 
vast  steppes  and  forests,  which  seem  to  indicate  the  insignificance 
of  man. 

16 


RUSSIAN  CHARACTER  IN  FICTION 

To  an  Englishman  or  an  American,  perhaps  the 
most  striking  trait  in  the  Russian  character  is  his 
lack  of  practical  force  —  the  paralysis  of  his  power 
of  will.  The  national  character  among  the  edu- 
cated classes  is  personified  in  fiction,  in  a  type  pecu- 
liarly Russian ;  and  that  may  be  best  defined  by 
calling  it  the  conventional  Hamlet.  I  say  the 
conventional  Hamlet,  for  I  believe  Shakespeare's 
Hamlet  is  a  man  of  immense  resolution  and  self- 
control.  The  Hamlet  of  the  commentators  is  as 
unlike  Shakespeare's  Hamlet  as  systematic  theology 
is  unlike  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount.  The  hero  of 
the  orthodox  Russian  novel  is  a  veritable  L'Aiglon. 
This  national  type  must  be  clearly  understood 
before  an  American  can  understand  Russian  novels 
at  all.  In  order  to  show  that  it  is  not  imaginary, 
but  real,  one  has  only  to  turn  to  Sienkiewicz's  power- 
ful work,  Without  Dogma,  the  very  title  expressing 
the  lack  of  conviction  that  destroys  the  hero. 

"Last  night,  at  Count  Malatesta's  reception,  I 
heard  by  chance  these  two  words,  Timproductivite" 
slave.'  I  experienced  the  same  relief  as  does  a 
nervous  patient  when  the  physician  tells  him  that 
his  symptoms  are  common  enough,  and  that  many 
others  suffer  from  the  same  disease.  ...  I  thought 
about  that '  improductivite  slave '  all  night.  He  had 
his  wits  about  him  who  summed  the  thing  up  in 
these  two  words.  There  is  something  in  us,  —  an 
c  17 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

incapacity  to  give  forth  all  that  is  in  us.  One  might 
say,  God  has  given  us  bow  and  arrow,  but  refused 
us  the  power  to  string  the  bow  and  send  the  arrow 
straight  to  its  aim.  I  should  like  to  discuss  it  with 
my  father,  but  am  afraid  to  touch  a  sore  point. 
Instead  of  this,  I  will  discuss  it  with  my  diary. 
Perhaps  it  will  be  just  the  thing  to  give  it  any  value. 
Besides,  what  can  be  more  natural  than  to  write 
about  what  interests  me?  Everybody  carries 
within  him  his  tragedy.  Mine  is  this  same  'im- 
productivite  slave'  of  the  Ploszowskis.  Not  long 
ago,  when  romanticism  flourished  hi  hearts  and 
poetry,  everybody  carried  his  tragedy  draped  around 
him  as  a  picturesque  cloak ;  now  it  is  carried  still, 
but  as  a  jagervest  next  to  the  skin.  But  with  a 
diary  it  is  different ;  with  a  diary  one  may  be  sincere. 
...  To  begin  with,  I  note  down  that  my  religious 
belief  I  carried  still  intact  with  me  from  Metz  did  not 
withstand  the  study  of  natural  philosophy.  It  does 
not  follow  that  I  am  an  atheist.  Oh,  no  !  this  was 
good  enough  in  former  times,  when  he  who  did  not 
believe  in  spirit,  said  to  himself,  'Matter,'  and 
that  settled  for  him  the  question.  Nowadays  only 
provincial  philosophers  cling  to  that  worn-out  creed. 
Philosophy  of  our  times  does  not  pronounce  upon 
the  matter;  to  all  such  questions,  it  says,  'I  do 
not  know.'  And  that  'I  do  not  know'  sinks  into 
and  permeates  the  mind.  Nowadays  psychology 
18 


RUSSIAN   CHARACTER  IN  FICTION 

occupies  itself  with  close  analysis  and  researches  of 
spiritual  manifestations ;  but  when  questioned  upon 
the  immortality  of  the  soul  it  says  the  same,  'I 
do  not  know,'  and  truly  it  does  not  know,  and  it 
cannot  know.  And  now  it  will  be  easier  to  describe 
the  state  of  my  mind.  It  all  lies  in  these  words:  I 
do  not  know.  In  this  —  in  the  acknowledged  im- 
potence of  the  human  mind  —  lies  the  tragedy. 
Not  to  mention  the  fact  that  humanity  always  has 
asked,  and  always  will  ask,  for  an  answer,  they  are 
truly  questions  of  more  importance  than  anything 
else  in  the  world.  If  there  be  something  on  the 
other  side,  and  that  something  an  eternal  life,  then 
misfortunes  and  losses  on  this  side  are  as  nothing. 
'I  am  content  to  die,'  says  Renan,  'but  I  should 
like  to  know  whether  death  will  be  of  any  use  to 
me.'  And  philosophy  replies,  'I  do  not  know.' 
And  man  beats  against  that  blank  wall,  and  like 
the  bedridden  sufferer  fancies,  if  he  could  lie  on  this 
or  on  that  side,  he  would  feel  easier.  What  is  to 
be  done?"1 

Those  last  five  words  are  often  heard  in  Russian 
mouths.  It  is  a  favourite  question.  It  is,  indeed, 
the  title  of  two  Russian  books. 

The  description  of  the  Slavonic  temperament 
given  by  Sienkiewicz  tallies  exactly  with  many 
prominent  characters  in  Russian  novels.  Tur- 

1  Translated  by  Iza  Young. 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

genev  first  completely  realised  it  in  Rudin ;  he 
afterwards  made  it  equally  clear  in  Torrents  of 
Spring,  Smoke,  and  other  novels.1  Raskolnikov, 
in  Dostoevski's  Crime  and  Punishment,  is  another 
illustration;  he  wishes  to  be  a  Napoleon,  and  suc- 
ceeds only  in  murdering  two  old  women.  Artsy- 
bashev,  in  his  terrible  novel,  Sanin,  has  given  an 
admirable  analysis  of  this  great  Russian  type  in  the 
character  of  Jurii,  who  finally  commits  suicide  sun- 
ply  because  he  cannot  find  a  working  theory  of  life. 
Writers  so  different  as  Tolstoi  and  Gorki  have  given 
plenty  of  good  examples.  Indeed,  Gorki,  in 
Varenka  Olessova,  has  put  into  the  mouth  of  a  sen- 
sible girl  an  excellent  sketch  of  the  national  repre- 
sentative. 

"The  Russian  hero  is  always  silly  and  stupid,  he 
is  always  sick  of  something;  always  thinking  of 
something  that  cannot  be  understood,  and  is  him- 
self so  miserable,  so  m  —  i  —  serable  !  He  will 
think,  think,  then  talk,  then  he  will  go  and  make  a 
declaration  of  love,  and  after  that  he  thinks,  and 
thinks  again,  till  he  marries.  .  .  .  And  when  he  is 
married,  he  talks  all  sorts  of  nonsense  to  his  wife, 
and  then  abandons  her." 

Turgenev's  Bazarov  and  Artsybashev's  Sanin 
indicate  the  ardent  revolt  against  the  national  mas- 

1  Goncharov  devoted  a  whole  novel,  Oblomov,  to  the  elabora- 
tion of  this  particular  type. 


RUSSIAN  CHARACTER  IN  FICTION 

culine  temperament ;  like  true  Slavs,  they  go  clear 
to  the  other  extreme,  and  bring  resolution  to  a 
reductio  ad  absurdum  ;  for  your  true  Russian  knows 
no  middle  course,  being  entirely  without  the  healthy 
moderation  of  the  Anglo-Saxon.  The  great  Tur- 
genev  realised  his  own  likeness  to  Rudin.  Mrs. 
Ritchie  has  given  a  very  pleasant  unconscious  tes- 
timony to  this  fact. 

"Just  then  my  glance  fell  upon  Turgenev l 
leaning  against  the  doorpost  at  the  far  end  of  the 
room,  and  as  I  looked,  I  was  struck,  being  short- 
sighted, by  a  certain  resemblance  to  my  father 
[Thackeray],  which  I  tried  to  realise  to  myself.  He 
was  very  tall,  his  hair  was  grey  and  abundant,  his 
attitude  was  quiet  and  reposeful;  I  looked  again 
and  again  while  I  pictured  to  myself  the  likeness. 
When  Turgenev  came  up  after  the  music,  he  spoke 
to  us  with  great  kindness,  spoke  of  our  father,  and 
of  having  dined  at  our  house,  and  he  promised  kindly 
and  willingly  to  come  and  call  next  day  upon  my 
sister  and  me  in  Onslow  Gardens.  I  can  remember 
that  next  day  still;  dull  and  dark,  with  a  yellow 
mist  in  the  air.  All  the  afternoon  I  sat  hoping  and 
expecting  that  Turgenev  might  come,  but  I  waited 
in  vain.  Two  days  later,  we  met  him  again  at  Mrs. 
Huth's,  where  we  were  all  once  more  assembled. 

1 1  have  made  the  spelling  of  Russian  names  uniform,  in  all 
citations. 

21 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

Mr.  Turgenev  came  straight  up  to  me  at  once. 
'I  was  so  sorry  that  I  could  not  come  and  see  you,' 
he  said, '  so  very  sorry,  but  I  was  prevented.  Look 
at  my  thumbs  ! '  and  he  held  up  both  his  hands  with 
the  palms  outwards.  I  looked  at  his  thumbs,  but 
I  could  not  understand.  'See  how  small  they  are,' 
he  went  on;  'people  with  such  little  thumbs  can 
never  do  what  they  intend  to  do,  they  always  let 
themselves  be  prevented ; '  and  he  laughed  so  kindly 
that  I  felt  as  if  his  visit  had  been  paid  all  the  time 
and  quite  understood  the  validity  of  the  excuse."  1 
It  is  seldom  that  the  national  characteristic  re- 
veals itself  so  playfully ;  it  is  more  likely  to  lead  to 
tragedy.  This  cardinal  fact  may  militate  greatly 
against  Russia's  position  as  a  world-power  in  the 
future,  as  it  has  in  the  past.  Her  capacity  for  pas- 
sive resistance  is  enormous  —  Napoleon  learned 
that,  and  so  did  Frederick.  A  remarkable  illus- 
tration of  it  was  afforded  by  the  late  Japanese  war, 
when  Port  Arthur  held  out  long  after  the  possible 
date  assigned  by  many  military  experts.  For  posi- 
tive aggressive  tactics  Russia  is  just  as  weak  na- 
tionally as  her  men  are  individually.  What  a  case 
in  point  is  the  Duma,  of  which  so  much  was  ex- 
pected !  Were  a  majority  of  that  Duma  Anglo- 
Saxons,  we  should  all  see  something  happen,  and  it 
would  not  happen  against  Finland.  One  has  only 

1  Blackstick  Papers,  1908. 
22 


RUSSIAN  CHARACTER  IN  FICTION 

to  compare  it  with  the  great  parliamentary  gather- 
ings in  England's  history.1 

Perhaps  if  the  membership  were  exclusively  com- 
posed of  women,  positive  results  would  show.  For, 
in  Russian  novels,  the  irresolution  of  the  men  is 
equalled  only  by  the  driving  force  of  the  women. 
The  Russian  feminine  type,  as  depicted  in  fiction, 
is  the  incarnation  of  singleness  of  purpose,  and  a 
capacity  to  bring  things  to  pass,  whether  for  good  or 
for  evil.  The  heroine  of  Rudin,  of  Smoke,  of  On 
the  Eve,  the  sinister  Maria  of  Torrents  of  Spring, 
the  immortal  Lisa  of  A  House  of  Gentlefolk,  the  girl 
in  Dostoevski's  Poor  Folk;  Dunia  and  Sonia,  in 
Crime  and  Punishment  —  many  others  might  be 
called  to  mind.  The  good  Russian  women  seem 
immensely  superior  to  the  men  in  their  instant 
perception  and  recognition  of  moral  values,  which 
gives  them  a  chart  and  compass  in  life.  Possibly, 
too,  the  women  are  stiffened  in  will  by  a  natural 
reaction  in  finding  their  husbands  and  brothers  so 
stuffed  with  inconclusive  theories.  One  is  appalled 
at  the  prodigious  amount  of  nonsense  that  Russian 
wives  and  daughters  are  forced  to  hear  from  their 
talkative  and  ineffective  heads  of  houses.  It 
must  be  worse  than  the  metaphysical  discussion 
between  Adam  and  the  angel,  while  Eve  waited  on 

1  Gogol  said  in  Dead  Souls,  "We  Russians  have  not  the  slightest 
talent  for  deliberative  assemblies." 
23 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

table,  and  supplied  the  windy  debaters  with  some- 
thing really  useful. 

To  one  who  is  well  acquainted  with  American 
university  undergraduates,  the  intellectual  matu- 
rity of  the  Russian  or  Polish  student  and  his  eager- 
ness for  the  discussion  of  abstract  problems  in  so- 
ciology and  metaphysics  are  very  impressive.  The 
amount  of  space  given  in  Russian  novels  to  philo- 
sophical introspection  and  debate  is  a  truthful 
portrayal  of  the  subtle  Russian  mind.  Russians 
love  to  talk;  they  are  strenuous  in  conversation, 
and  forget  their  meals  and  their  sleep.  I  have 
known  some  Russians  who  will  sit  up  all  night,  en- 
gaged in  the  discussion  of  a  purely  abstract  topic, 
totally  oblivious  to  the  passage  of  time.  In  A 
House  of  Gentlefolk,  at  four  o'clock  in  the  morning, 
Mihalevich  is  still  talking  about  the  social  duties 
of  Russian  landowners,  and  he  roars  out,  "We  are 
sleeping,  and  the  time  is  slipping  away;  we  are 
sleeping!"  Lavretsky  replies,  "Permit  me  to 
observe,  that  we  are  not  sleeping  at  present,  but 
rather  preventing  others  from  sleeping.  We  are 
straining  our  throats  like  the  cocks  —  listen ! 
there  is  one  crowing  for  the  third  time."  To  which 
Mihalevich  smilingly  rejoins,  "Good-bye  till  to- 
morrow." Then  follows,  "But  the  friends  talked 
for  more  than  an  hour  longer."  In  Chirikov's 
24 


RUSSIAN  CHARACTER  IN  FICTION 

powerful  drama,  The  Jews,  the  scene  of  animated 
discussion  that  takes  place  on  the  stage  is  a  perfect 
picture  of  what  is  happening  in  hundreds  of  Russian 
towns  every  night.  An  admirable  description  of  a 
typical  Russian  conversation  is  given  by  Turgenev, 
in  Virgin  Soil:  — 

"Like  the  first  flakes  of  snow,  swiftly  whirling, 
crossing  and  recrossing  in  the  still  mild  air  of  au- 
tumn, words  began  flying,  tumbling,  jostling  against 
one  another  in  the  heated  atmosphere  of  Golush- 
kin's  dining-room  —  words  of  all  sorts  —  progress, 
government,  literature;  the  taxation  question,  the 
church  question,  the  Roman  question,  the  law-court 
question ;  classicism,  realism,  nihilism,  commu- 
nism; international,  clerical,  liberal,  capital;  ad- 
ministration, organisation,  association,  and  even 
crystallisation !  It  was  just  this  uproar  which 
seemed  to  arouse  Golushkin  to  enthusiasm;  the 
real  gist  of  the  matter  seemed  to  consist  in  this, 
for  him."  l 

The  Anglo-Saxon  is  content  to  allow  ideas  that 
are  inconsistent  and  irreconcilable  to  get  along  to- 
gether as  best  they  may  in  his  mind,  in  order  that 
he  may  somehow  get  something  done.  Not  so  the 
Russian.  Dr.  Johnson,  who  settled  Berkeleian 
idealism  by  kicking  a  stone,  and  the  problem  of  free 

1  All  citations  from  Turgenev's  novels  are  from  Constance 
Garnett's  translations. 

25 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

will  by  stoutly  declaring,  "I  know  I'm  free  and 
there's  an  end  on't,"  would  have  had  an  interest- 
ing time  among  the  Slavs. 

It  is  rather  fortunate  that  the  Russian  love  of 
theory  is  so  often  accompanied  by  the  paralysis  of 
will  power,  otherwise  political  crimes  would  be 
much  commoner  in  Russia  than  they  are.  The 
Russian  is  tremendously  impulsive,  but  not  at  all 
practical.  Many  hold  the  most  extreme  views, 
views  that  would  shock  a  typical  Anglo-Saxon  out 
of  his  complacency ;  but  they  remain  harmless  and 
gentle  theorists.  Many  Russians  do  not  believe  in 
God,  or  Law,  or  Civil  Government,  or  Marriage, 
or  any  of  the  fundamental  Institutions  of  Society; 
but  their  daily  life  is  as  regular  and  conventional  as 
a  New  Englander's.  Others,  however,  attempt  to 
live  up  to  their  theories,  not  so  much  for  their  per- 
sonal enjoyment,  as  for  the  satisfaction  that  comes 
from  intellectual  consistency.  In  general,  it  may  be 
said  that  the  Russian  is  far  more  of  an  extremist,  far 
more  influenced  by  theory,  than  people  of  the  West. 
This  is  particularly  true  of  the  youth  of  Russia, 
always  hot-headed  and  impulsive,  and  who  are  con- 
stantly attempting  to  put  into  practice  the  latest 
popular  theories  of  life.  American  undergraduates 
are  the  most  conservative  folk  in  the  world;  if 
any  strange  theory  in  morals  or  politics  becomes 
noised  abroad,  the  American  student  opposes  to  it 
26 


RUSSIAN   CHARACTER  IN   FICTION 

the  one  time-honoured  weapon  of  the  conservative 
from  Aristophanes  down,  —  burlesque.  Mock  pro- 
cessions and  absurd  travesties  of  "the  latest  thing" 
in  politics  are  a  feature  of  every  academic  year  at  an 
American  university.  Indeed,  an  American  stu- 
dent leading  a  radical  political  mob  is  simply  un- 
thinkable. It  is  common  enough  in  Russia,  where  in 
political  disturbances  students  are  very  often  prom- 
inent. If  a  young  Russian  gives  his  intellectual 
assent  to  a  theory,  his  first  thought  is  to  illustrate 
it  in  his  life.  One  of  the  most  terrible  results  of 
the  publication  of  Artsybashev's  novel  Sanin  — 
where  the  hero's  theory  of  life  is  simply  to  enjoy  it, 
and  where  the  Christian  system  of  morals  is  ridi- 
culed—  was  the  organisation,  in  various  high 
schools,  among  the  boys  and  girls,  of  societies  zum 
ungehinderten  Geschechtsgenuss.  They  were  simply 
doing  what  Sanin  told  them  they  ought  to  do ;  and 
having  decided  that  he  was  right,  they  immediately 
put  his  theories  into  practice.  Again,  when  Tolstoi 
finally  made  up  his  mind  that  the  Christian  system 
of  ethics  was  correct,  he  had  no  peace  until  he  had 
attempted  to  live  in  every  respect  in  accordance  with 
those  doctrines.  And  he  persuaded  thousands 
of  Russians  to  attempt  the  same  thing.  Now 
in  England  and  in  America,  every  minister  knows 
that  it  is  perfectly  safe  to  preach  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount  every  day  in  the  year.  There  is 
27 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

no  occasion  for  alarm.    Nobody  will  do  anything 
rash. 

The  fact  that  the  French  language,  culture,  and 
manners  have  been  superimposed  upon  Russian 
society  should  never  be  forgotten  in  a  discussion  of 
the  Russian  national  character.  For  many  years, 
and  until  very  recently,  French  was  the  language 
constantly  used  by  educated  and  aristocratic  na- 
tive Russians,  just  as  it  is  by  the  Poles  and  by  the 
Roumanians.  It  will  never  cease  seeming  strange 
to  an  American  to  hear  a  Russian  mother  and  son 
talk  intimately  together  in  a  language  not  their  own. 
Even  Pushkin,  the  founder  of  Russian  literature, 
the  national  poet,  wrote  in  a  letter  to  a  friend,  "  Je 
vous  parlerai  la  langue  de  1'Europe,  elle  m'est  plus 
familiere."  Imagine  Tennyson  writing  a  letter  in 
French,  with  the  explanation  that  French  came 
easier  to  him ! 

It  follows,  as  a  consequence,  that  the  chief  read- 
ing of  Russian  society  people  is  French  novels; 
that  French  customs,  morals,  and  manners  (as 
portrayed  in  French  fiction)  have  had  an  enormous 
effect  on  the  educated  classes  in  Russia.  If  we  may 
believe  half  the  testimony  we  hear, — I  am  not  sure 
that  we  can, — Russian  aristocratic  society  is  to-day 
the  most  corrupt  in  the  world.  There  is  an  im- 
mense contrast  between  Parisians  and  Russians, 
28 


RUSSIAN  CHARACTER  IN  FICTION 

and  the  literature  that  would  not  damage  the  mor- 
als of  the  former  is  deadly  to  the  latter.  The  spirit 
of  mockery  in  the  Parisian  throws  off  the  germs  of 
their  theatre  and  their  fiction.  I  have  seen  in  a 
Parisian  theatre  men,  their  wives,  and  their  families 
laughing  unrestrainedly  at  a  piece,  that  if  exhibited 
before  an  American  audience  would  simply  disgust 
some,  and  make  others  morbidly  attentive.  This 
kind  of  literature,  comic  or  tragic,  disseminated  as 
it  everywhere  is  among  impulsive  and  passionate 
Russian  readers,  has  been  anything  but  morally 
healthful.  One  might  as  rationally  go  about  and 
poison  wells.  And  the  Russian  youth  are  sophisti- 
cated to  a  degree  that  seems  to  us  almost  startling. 
In  1903,  a  newspaper  in  Russia  sent  out  thousands 
of  blanks  to  high  school  boys  and  girls  all  over  the 
country,  to  discover  what  books  constituted  their 
favourite  reading.  Among  native  authors,  Tolstoi 
was  first,  closely  followed  by  Gorki ;  among  foreign 
writers,  Guy  de  Maupassant  was  the  most  popular  ! 
The  constant  reading  of  Maupassant  by  boys  and 
girls  of  fifteen  and  sixteen  years,  already  emanci- 
pated from  the  domination  of  religious  ideas,  can 
hardly  be  morally  hygienic.  And  to-day,  in  many 
families  all  over  the  Western  world,  Hygiene  has 
taken  the  place  of  God. 

Russian  novelists  have  given  us  again  and  again 
pictures  of  typical  society  women  who  are  thor- 
29 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

oughly  corrupt.  We  find  them  in  historical  and 
in  contemporary  fiction.  They  are  in  War  and 
Peace,  in  Anna  Karenina,  in  Dead  Souls,  in  A  House 
of  Gentlefolk,  and  in  the  books  of  to-day.  And  it  is 
worth  remembering  that  when  Tolstoi  was  a  young 
man,  his  aunt  advised  him  to  have  an  intrigue  with 
a  married  woman,  for  the  added  polish  and  ease  it 
would  give  to  his  manners,  just  as  an  American 
mother  sends  her  boy  to  dancing-school. 

Finally,  in  reading  the  works  of  Tolstoi,  Tur- 
genev,  Dostoevski,  Gorki,  Chekhov,  Andreev, 
and  others,  what  is  the  general  impression  produced 
on  the  mind  of  a  foreigner?  It  is  one  of  intense 
gloom.  Of  all  the  dark  books  in  fiction,  no  works 
sound  such  depths  of  suffering  and  despair  as  are 
fathomed  by  the  Russians.  Many  English  readers 
used  to  say  that  the  novels  of  George  Eliot  were 
" profoundly  sad,"  —  it  became  almost  a  hackneyed 
phrase.  Her  stories  are  rollicking  comedies  com- 
pared with  the  awful  shadow  cast  by  the  literature 
of  the  Slavs.  Suffering  is  the  heritage  of  the  Rus- 
sian race;  their  history  is  steeped  in  blood  and 
tears,  their  present  condition  seems  intolerably 
painful,  and  the  future  is  an  impenetrable  cloud. 
In  the  life  of  the  peasants  there  is  of  course  fun  and 
laughter,  as  there  is  in  every  human  life;  but  at 
the  root  there  is  suffering,  not  the  loud  protest  of  the 
30 


RUSSIAN  CHARACTER  IN  FICTION 

Anglo-Saxon  labourer,  whose  very  loudness  is  a 
witness  to  his  vitality  —  but  passive,  fatalistic, 
apathetic  misery.  Life  has  been  often  defined,  but 
never  in  a  more  depressing  fashion  than  by  the 
peasant  in  Gorki's  novel,  who  asks  quietly:  — 

"What  does  the  word  Life  mean  to  us  ?  A  feast  ? 
No.  Work  ?  No.  A  battle  ?  Oh,  no  ! !  For  us 
Life  is  something  merely  tiresome,  dull,  —  a  kind 
of  heavy  burden.  In  carrying  it  we  sigh  with 
weariness  and  complain  of  its  weight.  Do  we  really 
love  Life !  The  Love  of  Life !  The  very  words 
sound  strange  to  our  ears  !  We  love  only  our  dreams 
of  the  future  —  and  this  love  is  Platonic,  with  no 
hope  of  fruition." 

Suffering  is  the  corner-stone  of  Russian  life,  as  it 
is  of  Russian  fiction.  That  is  one  reason  why  the 
Russians  produce  here  and  there  such  splendid 
characters,  and  such  mighty  books.  The  Russian 
capacity  for  suffering  is  the  real  text  of  the  great 
works  of  Dostoevski,  and  the  reason  why  his  name 
is  so  beloved  in  Russia  —  he  understood  the  hearts 
of  his  countrymen.  Of  all  the  courtesans  who  have 
illustrated  the  Christian  religion  on  the  stage  and 
in  fiction,  the  greatest  is  Dostoevski's  Sonia.  Her 
amazing  sincerity  and  deep  simplicity  make  us 
ashamed  of  any  tribute  of  tears  we  may  have  given 
to  the  familiar  sentimental  type.  She  does  not 
know  what  the  word  "sentiment"  means;  but  the 
31 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

awful  sacrifice  of  her  daily  life  is  the  great  modern 
illustration  of  Love.  Christ  again  is  crucified. 
When  the  refined,  cultivated,  philosophical  student 
Raskolnikov  stoops  to  this  ignorant  girl  and  kisses 
her  feet,  he  says,  "I  did  not  bow  down  to  you  indi- 
vidually, but  to  suffering  Humanity  in  your  per- 
son." That  phrase  gives  us  an  insight  into  the 
Russian  national  character. 

The  immediate  result  of  all  this  suffering  as  set 
forth  in  the  lives  and  in  the  books  of  the  great  Rus- 
sians, is  Sympathy  —  pity  and  sympathy  for  Hu- 
manity. Thousands  are  purified  and  ennobled  by 
these  sublime  pictures  of  woe.  And  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  of  contemporary  Russian  novels  — 
Andreev's  The  Seven  Who  Were  Hanged,  a  book 
bearing  on  every  page  the  stamp  of  indubitable 
genius  —  radiates  a  sympathy  and  pity  that  are 
almost  divine. 

This  growth  of  Love  and  Sympathy  in  the  Rus- 
sian national  character  is  to  me  the  sign  of  greatest 
promise  in  their  future,  both  as  a  nation  of  men  and 
women,  and  as  a  contributor  to  the  world's  great 
works  of  literary  art.  If  anything  can  dispel  the 
black  clouds  in  their  dreary  sky,  it  will  be  this 
wonderful  emotional  power.  The  political  changes, 
the  Trans-Siberian  railway,  their  industrial  and 
agricultural  progress,  —  all  these  are  as  nothing 
compared  with  the  immense  advance  that  Chris- 
32 


RUSSIAN  CHARACTER  IN  FICTION 

tian  sympathy  is  now  making  in  the  hearts  of  the 
Russian  people.  The  books  of  Dostoevski  and 
Tolstoi  point  directly  to  the  Gospel,  and  although 
Russia  is  theoretically  a  Christian  nation,  no  coun- 
try needs  real  Christianity  more  than  she.  The 
tyranny  of  the  bureaucracy,  the  corruption  of 
fashionable  society,  the  sufferings  of  the  humble 
classes,  the  hollow  formalism  of  the  Church,  make 
Russia  particularly  ripe  for  the  true  Gospel  —  just 
as  true  to-day  as  when  given  to  the  world  in  Pales- 
tine. Sixty  years  ago  Gogol  wrote:  "What  is  it 
that  is  most  truly  Russian?  What  is  the  main 
characteristic  of  our  Russian  nature,  that  we  now 
try  to  develop  by  making  it  reject  everything  strange 
and  foreign  to  it  ?  The  value  of  the  Russian  nature 
consists  in  this  —  that  it  is  capable,  more  than  any 
other,  of  receiving  the  noble  word  of  the  Gospel, 
which  leads  man  toward  perfection."  One  cannot 
read  Dostoevski  and  Tolstoi  without  thinking  of 
the  truth  of  Gogol's  declaration. 

All  the  philosophy  and  wisdom  of  the  world  have 
never  improved  on  the  teachings  of  the  Founder  of 
Christianity.  What  the  individual  and  society 
need  to-day  is  not  Socialism,  Communism,  or  Nihil- 
ism; no  temporary  palliative  sought  in  political, 
social,  or  financial  Reform ;  what  we  each  need  is^ 
closer  personal  contact  with  the  simple  truths  of 
the  New  Testament.  The  last  word  on  all  political, 
D  33 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

philosophical,  and  social  questions  may  still  be 
found  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount.  It  is  a  signifi- 
cant fact,  that  Tolstoi,  after  a  varied  and  long 
experience  of  human  life,  after  reviewing  all  the 
systems  of  thought  that  have  influenced  modern 
society,  should  have  finally  arrived  and  found  rest 
in  the  statements  that  most  of  us  learned  in 
childhood  from  our  mothers'  lips. 


34 


II 

GOGOL 

NIKOLAI  VASSILIEVICH  GOGOL  was  born  at 
Sorotchinetz,  in  Little  Russia,  in  March,  1809. 
The  year  in  which  he  appeared  on  the  planet  proved 
to  be  the  literary  annus  mirabilis  of  the  century; 
for  in  that  same  twelvemonth  were  born  Charles 
Darwin,  Alfred  Tennyson,  Abraham  Lincoln,  Poe, 
Gladstone,  and  Holmes.  His  father  was  a  lover 
of  literature,  who  wrote  dramatic  pieces  for  his 
own  amusement,  and  who  spent  his  time  on  the 
old  family  estates,  not  in  managing  the  farms,  but 
in  wandering  about  the  fields,  and  beholding  the 
fowls  of  the  air.  The  boy  inherited  much  from 
his  father ;  but,  unlike  Turgenev,  he  had  the  best 
of  all  private  tutors,  a  good  mother,  of  whom  his 
biographer  says,  Rile  demeure  toujours  sa  plus  in- 
time  amie.1 

At  the  age  of  twelve,  Nikolai  was  sent  away  to 
the  high  school  at  Nezhin,  a  town  near  Kiev. 
There  he  remained  from  1821  to  1828.  He  was 
an  unpromising  student,  having  no  enthusiasm 
for  his  lessons,  and  showing  no  distinction  either 

1  For  the  facts  in  Gogol's  life,  I  have  relied  chiefly  on  the  doc- 
tor's thesis  by  Raina  Tyrneva,  Aix,  1901. 

35 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

in  scholarship  or  deportment.  Fortunately,  how- 
ever, the  school  had  a  little  theatre  of  its  own,  and 
Gogol,  who  hated  mathematics,  and  cared  little 
for  the  study  of  modern  languages,  here  found  an 
outlet  for  all  his  mental  energy.  He  soon  became 
the  acknowledged  leader  of  the  school  in  matters 
dramatic,  and  unconsciously  prepared  himself 
for  his  future  career.  Like  Schiller,  he  wrote  a 
tragedy,  and  called  it  The  Robbers. 

I  think  it  is  probable  that  Gogol's  hatred  for 
the  school  curriculum  inspired  a  passage  in  Taras 
Bulba,  though  here  he  ostensibly  described  the 
pedagogy  of  the  fifteenth  century. 

"The  style  of  education  in  that  age  differed 
widely  from  the  manner  of  life.  These  scholastic, 
grammatical,  rhetorical,  and  logical  subtilties  were 
decidedly  out  of  consonance  with  the  times,  never 
had  any  connection  with  and  never  were  encountered 
in  actual  life.  Those  who  studied  them  could  not 
apply  their  knowledge  to  anything  whatever,  not 
even  the  least  scholastic  of  them.  The  learned  men 
of  those  days  were  even  more  incapable  than  the 
rest,  because  farther  removed  from  all  experience."  l 

In  December,  1828,  Gogol  took  up  his  residence 
in  St.  Petersburg,  bringing  with  him  some  manu- 
scripts that  he  had  written  while  at  school.  He 
had  the  temerity  to  publish  one,  which  was  so  bru- 

1  Translated  by  Isabel  Hapgood. 
36 


GOGOL 

tally  ridiculed  by  the  critics,  that  the  young  genius, 
in  despair,  burned  all  the  unsold  copies  —  an  un- 
witting prophecy  of  a  later  and  more  lamentable 
conflagration.  Then  he  vainly  tried  various 
means  of  subsistence.  Suddenly  he  decided  to 
seek  his  fortune  in  America,  but  he  was  both 
homesick  and  seasick  before  the  ship  emerged  from 
the  Baltic,  and  from  Lubeck  he  fled  incontinently 
back  to  Petersburg.  Then  he  tried  to  become  an 
actor,  but  lacked  the  necessary  strength  of  voice. 
For  a  short  time  he  held  a  minor  official  position, 
and  a  little  later  was  professor  of  history,  an  oc- 
cupation he  did  not  enjoy,  saying  after  his  resig- 
nation, "Now  I  am  a  free  Cossack  again."  Mean- 
while his  pen  was  steadily  busy,  and  his  sketches 
of  farm  life  in  the  Ukraine  attracted  considerable 
attention  among  literary  circles  in  the  capital. 

Gogol  suffered  from  nostalgia  all  the  time  he  lived 
at  St.  Petersburg ;  he  did  not  care  for  that  form  of 
society,  and  the  people,  he  said,  did  not  seem  like 
real  Russians.  He  was  thoroughly  homesick  for 
his  beloved  Ukraine;  and  it  is  significant  that  his 
short  stories  of  life  in  Little  Russia,  truthfully  de- 
picting the  country  customs,  were  written  far  off 
in  a  strange  and  uncongenial  environment. 

In  1831  he  had  the  good  fortune  to  meet  the 
poet  Pushkin,  and  a  few  months  later  in  the  same 
year  he  was  presented  to  Madame  Smirnova ;  these 
37 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN   NOVELISTS 

friends  gave  him  the  entree  to  the  literary  salons, 
and  the  young  author,  lonesome  as  he  was,  found 
the  intellectual  stimulation  he  needed.  It  was 
Pushkin  who  suggested  to  him  the  subjects  for 
two  of  his  most  famous  works,  Revizor  and  Dead 
Souls.  Another  friend,  Jukovski,  exercised  a  pow- 
erful influence,  and  gave  invaluable  aid  at  several 
crises  of  his  career.  Jukovski  had  translated  the 
Iliad  and  the  Odyssey;  his  enthusiasm  for  Hellenic 
poetry  was  contagious ;  and  under  this  inspiration 
Gogol  proceeded  to  write  the  most  Homeric  ro- 
mance in  Russian  literature,  Taras  Bulba.  This 
story  gave  the  first  indubitable  proof  of  its  author's 
genius,  and  to-day  in  the  world's  fiction  it  holds  an 
unassailable  place  in  the  front  rank.  The  book  is  so 
short  that  it  can  be  read  through  in  less  than  two 
hours ;  but  it  gives  the  same  impression  of  vastness 
and  immensity  as  the  huge  volumes  of  Sienkiewicz. 

Gogol  followed  this  amazingly  powerful  romance 
by  two  other  works,  which  seem  to  have  all  the 
marks  of  immortality  —  the  comedy  Revizor,  and  a 
long,  unfinished  novel,  Dead  Souls.  This  latter  book 
is  the  first  of  the  great  realistic  novels  of  Russia, 
of  which  Fathers  and  Children,  Crime  and  Punish- 
ment,'and  Anna  Karenina  are  such  splendid  examples. 

From  1836  until  his  death  in  1852,  Gogol  lived 
mainly  abroad,  and  spent  much  time  in  travel. 
His  favourite  place  of  residence  was  Rome,  to 
38 


GOGOL 

which  city  he  repeatedly  returned  with  increasing 
affection.  In  1848  he  made  a  pilgrimage  to  the  Holy 
Land,  for  Gogol  never  departed  from  the  pious 
Christian  faith  taught  him  by  his  mother;  in  fact, 
toward  the  end  of  his  life,  he  became  an  ascetic  and 
a  mystic.  The  last  years  were  shadowed  by  illness 
and  —  a  common  thing  among  Russian  writers  — 
by  intense  nervous  depression.  He  died  at  Mos- 
cow, 21  February  1852.  His  last  words  were  the  old 
saying,  "And  I  shall  laugh  with  a  bitter  laugh." 
These  words  were  placed  on  his  tomb. 

Most  Russian  novels  are  steeped  in  pessimism, 
and  their  authors  were  men  of  sorrows.  Gogol, 
however,  has  the  double  distinction  of  being  the 
only  great  comic  writer  in  the  language,  and  in 
particular  of  being  the  author  of  the  only  Russian 
drama  known  all  over  the  world,  and  still  acted 
everywhere  on  the  Continent.  Although  plays 
do  not  come  within  the  scope  of  this  book,  a  word 
or  two  should  be  said  about  this  great  comedy ; 
for  Revizor  exhibits  clearly  the  double  nature  of 
the  author,  —  his  genius  for  moral  satire  and  his 
genius  for  pure  fun.  From  the  moral  point  of  view, 
it  is  a  terrible  indictment  against  the  most  corrupt 
bureaucracy  of  modern  times;  from  the  comic 
point  of  view,  it  is  an  uproarious  farce. 

The  origin  of  the  play  is  as  follows :  while  travel- 
ling in  Russia  one  day,  Pushkin  stopped  at  Nizhni- 
39 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

Novgorod.  Here  he  was  mistaken  for  a  state 
functionary  on  tour  among  the  provinces  for  pur- 
poses of  government  inspection.  This  amused 
the  poet  so  keenly  that  he  narrated  all  the  cir- 
cumstances to  Gogol  and  suggested  that  the  latter 
make  a  play  with  this  experience  as  the  basis  of 
the  plot.  Gogol  not  only  acted  on  the  suggestion, 
but  instead  of  a  mere  farce,  he  produced  a  comedy 
of  manners.  Toward  the  end  of  his  life  he  wrote : 
"In  Revizor  I  tried  to  gather  in  one  heap  all  that 
was  bad  in  Russia,  as  I  then  understood  it ;  I  wished 
to  turn  it  all  into  ridicule.  The  real  impression  pro- 
duced was  that  of  fear.  Through  the  laughter  that 
I  have  never  laughed  more  loudly,  the  spectator 
feels  my  bitterness  and  sorrow."  The  drama  was 
finished  on  the  4  December  1835,  and  of  course  the 
immediate  difficulty  was  the  censorship.  How 
would  it  be  possible  for  such  a  satire  either  to  be 
printed  or  acted  in  Russia  ?  Gogol's  friend,  Mad- 
ame Smirnova,  carried  the  manuscript  to  the  Czar, 
Nikolas  I.  It  was  read  to  him;  he  roared  with 
laughter,  and  immediately  ordered  that  it  be  acted. 
We  may  note  also  that  he  became  a  warm  friend 
of  Gogol,  and  sent  sums  of  money  to  him,  saying 
nobly,  "Don't  let  him  know  the  source  of  these 
gifts ;  for  then  he  might  feel  obliged  to  write  from 
the  official  point  of  view." 
The  first  performance  was  on  the  19  April  1836. 
40 


GOGOL 

The  Czar  attended  in  person,  and  applauded  vig- 
orously. The  success  was  immediate,  and  it  has 
never  quitted  the  stage.  Gogol  wrote  to  a  friend: 
"On  the  opening  night  I  felt  uncomfortable  from 
the  very  first  as  I  sat  in  the  theatre.  Anxiety  for 
the  approval  of  the  audience  did  not  trouble  me. 
There  was  only  one  critic  in  the  house  —  myself  — 
that  I  feared.  I  heard  clamorous  objections  within 
me  which  drowned  all  else.  However,  the  public, 
as  a  whole,  was  satisfied.  Half  of  the  audience 
praised  the  play,  the  other  half  condemned  it, 
but  not  on  artistic  grounds." 

Revizor  is  one  of  the  best-constructed  comedies 
in  any  language ;  for  not  only  has  it  a  unified  and 
well-ordered  plot,  but  it  does  not  stop  with  the 
final  fall  of  the  curtain.  Most  plays  by  attempting 
to  finish  up  the  story  with  smooth  edges,  leave  an 
impression  of  artificiality  and  unreality,  for  life  is 
not  done  up  in  such  neat  parcels.  The  greatest 
dramas  do  not  solve  problems  for  us,  they  supply 
us  with  questions.  In  Revizor,  at  the  last  dumb 
scene,  after  all  the  mirth,  the  real  trouble  is  about 
to  begin;  and  the  spectators  depart,  not  merely 
with  the  delightful  memory  of  an  evening's  en- 
tertainment, but  with  their  imagination  aflame. 
Furthermore,  Revizor  has  that  combination  of 
the  intensely  local  element  with  the  universal,  so 
characteristic  of  works  of  genius.  Its  avowed  at- 
41 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

tempt  was  to  satirise  local  and  temporal  abuses ; 
but  it  is  impossible  to  imagine  any  state  of  society 
in  the  near  future  where  the  play  will  not  seem 
real.  If  Gogol  had  done  nothing  but  write  the  best 
comedy  in  the  Russian  language,  he  would  have  his 
place  in  literature  secure.1 

One  must  never  forget  in  reading  Gogol  that  he 
was  a  man  of  the  South  —  homme  du  Midi.  In 
all  countries  of  the  world,  there  is  a  marked  dif- 
ference between  the  Northern  and  the  Southern 
temperament.  The  southern  sun  seems  to  make 
human  nature  more  mellow.  Southerners  are 
more  warm-hearted,  more  emotional,  more  hos- 
pitable, and  much  more  free  in  the  expression 
of  their  feelings.  In  the  United  States,  every  one 
knows  the  contrast  between  the  New  Englander 
and  the  man  from  the  Gulf;  in  Europe,  the 
difference  between  the  Norman  and  the  Gascon  has 
always  been  apparent  —  how  clear  it  is  in 
the  works  of  Flaubert  and  of  Rostand !  Like- 
wise how  interesting  is  the  comparison  between 
the  Prussian  and  the  Bavarian;  we  may  have  a 
wholesome  respect  for  Berlin,  but  we  love  Munich, 

1  The  first  production  of  Revizor  in  America  (in  English)  was 
given  by  the  students  of  Yale  University,  20  April,  1908.  For 
all  I  know  to  the  contrary,  it  vvas  the  first  English  production  in 
the  world.  It  was  immensely  successful,  caused  subsequent 
performances  elsewhere,  both  amateur  and  professional,  and 
attracted  attention  in  Russia,  where  a  journal  gave  an  illustrated 
account  of  the  Yale  representation. 
42 


GOGOL 

in  some  respects  the  most  attractive  town  on  earth. 
The  parallel  holds  good  in  Russia,  where  the  Little 
Russians,  the  men  of  the  Ukraine,  have  ever 
shown  characteristics  that  separate  them  from 
the  people  of  the  North.  The  fiery  passion,  the 
boundless  aspiration  of  the  Cossack,  animates 
the  stories  of  Gogol  with  a  veritable  flame. 

His  first  book,  Evenings  on  a  Farm  near  the 
Dikanka  (Veillees  de  ly Ukraine),  appeared  early 
in  the  thirties,  and,  with  all  its  crudity  and  ex- 
crescences, was  a  literary  sunrise.  It  attracted 
immediate  and  wide-spread  attention,  and  the  wits 
of  Petersburg  knew  that  Russia  had  an  original 
novelist.  The  work  is  a  collection  of  short  stories 
or  sketches,  introduced  with  a  rollicking  humorous 
preface,  in  which  the  author  announces  himself 
as  Rudii  Panko,  raiser  of  bees.  Into  this  book 
the  exile  in  the  city  of  the  North  poured  out  all 
his  love  for  the  country  and  the  village  customs 
of  his  own  Little  Russia.  He  gives  us  great  pic- 
tures of  Nature,  and  little  pictures  of  social  life. 
He  describes  with  the  utmost  detail  a  country  fair 
at  the  place  of  his  birth,  Sorotchinetz.  His  de- 
scriptions of  the  simple  folk,  the  beasts,  and  the 
bargainings  seem  as  true  as  those  in  Madame  Bovary 
—  the  difference  is  in  the  attitude  of  the  author 
toward  his  work.  Gogol  has  nothing  of  the  aloof- 
ness, nothing  of  the  scorn  of  Flaubert;  he  himself 
43 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

loves  the  revelry  and  the  superstitions  he  pictures, 
loves  above  all  the  people.  Superstition  plays  a 
prominent  role  in  these  sketches ;  the  unseen  world 
of  ghosts  and  apparitions  has  an  enormous  influence 
on  the  daily  life  of  the  peasants.  The  love  of 
fun  is  everywhere  in  evidence ;  these  people  cannot 
live  without  practical  jokes,  violent  dances,  and 
horse-play.  Shadowy  forms  of  amorous  couples 
move  silent  in  the  warm  summer  night,  and  the 
stillness  is  broken  by  silver  laughter.  Far  away, 
in  his  room  at  St.  Petersburg,  shut  in  by  the  long 
winter  darkness,  the  homesick  man  dreamed  of 
the  vast  landscape  he  loved,  in  the  warm  embrace 
of  the  sky  at  noon,  or  asleep  in  the  pale  moonlight. 
The  first  sentence  of  the  book  is  a  cry  of  longing. 
"What  ecstasy;  what  splendour  has  a  summer  day 
in  Little  Russia !"  Pushkin  used  to  say  that  the 
Northern  summer  was  a  caricature  of  the  Southern 
winter. 

The  Evenings  on  a  Farm  indicates  the  possession 
of  great  power  rather  than  consummate  skill  in 
the  use  of  it.  Full  of  charm  as  it  is,  it  cannot  by 
any  stretch  of  language  be  called  a  masterpiece. 
Two  years  later,  however,  Gogol  produced  one  of 
the  great  prose  romances  of  the  world,  Taras  Bulba. 
He  had  intended  to  write  a  history  of  Little  Russia 
and  a  history  of  the  Middle  Ages,  in  eight  or  nine 
volumes.  In  order  to  gather  material,  he  read 

44 


GOGOL 

annals  diligently,  and  collected  folk-lore,  national 
songs,  and  local  traditions.  Fortunately  out  of 
this  welter  of  matter  emerged  not  a  big  history, 
but  a  short  novel.  Short  as  it  is,  it  has  been  called 
an  epical  poem  in  the  manner  of  Homer,  and  a 
dramatisation  of  history  in  the  manner  of  Shake- 
speare. Both  remarks  are  just,  though  the  influ- 
ence of  Homer  is  the  more  evident;  in  the  de- 
scriptive passages,  the  style  is  deliberately  Homeric, 
as  it  is  in  the  romances  of  Sienkiewicz,  which  owe 
so  much  to  this  little  book  by  Gogol.  It  is  as- 
tonishing that  so  small  a  work  can  show  such 
colossal  force.  Force  is  its  prime  quality  —  physi- 
cal, mental,  religious.  In  this  story  the  old  Cos- 
sacks, centuries  dead,  have  a  genuine  resurrection 
of  the  body.  They  appear  before  us  in  all  their 
amazing  vitality,  their  love  of  fighting,  of  eating 
and  drinking,  their  intense  patriotism,  and  their 
blazing  devotion  to  their  religious  faith.  Never 
was  a  book  more  plainly  inspired  by  passion  for 
race  and  native  land.  It  is  one  tremendous  shout 
of  joy.  These  Cossacks  are  the  veritable  children 
of  the  steppes,  and  their  vast  passions,  their  Homeric 
laughter,  their  absolute  recklessness  in  battle,  are 
simply  an  expression  of  the  boundless  range  of 
the  mighty  landscape. 

"The  further  they  penetrated  the  steppe,  the 
more  beautiful  it  became.    Then  all  the  South, 
45 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

all  that  region  which  now  constitutes  New  Russia, 
even  to  the  Black  Sea,  was  a  green,  virgin  wilder- 
ness. No  plough  had  ever  passed  over  the  im- 
measurable waves  of  wild  growth ;  the  horses  alone, 
hiding  themselves  in  it  as  in  a  forest,  trod  it  down. 
Nothing  in  nature  could  be  finer.  The  whole  sur- 
face of  the  earth  presented  itself  as  a  green-gold 
ocean,  upon  which  were  sprinkled  millions  of 
different  flowers.  Through  the  tall,  slender  stems 
of  the  grass  peeped  light-blue,  dark-blue,  and 
lilac  star-thistles;  the  yellow  broom  thrust  up  its 
pyramidal  head;  the  parasol-shaped  white  flower 
of  the  false  flax  shimmered  on  high.  A  wheat- 
ear,  brought  God  knows  whence,  was  filling  out  to 
ripening.  About  their  slender  roots  ran  partridges 
with  out-stretched  necks.  The  air  was  filled  with 
the  notes  of  a  thousand  different  birds.  In  the 
sky,  immovable,  hung  the  hawks,  their  wings  out- 
spread, and  their  eyes  fixed  intently  on  the  grass. 
The  cries  of  a  cloud  of  wild  ducks,  moving  up 
from  one]  side,  were  echoed  from  God  knows  what 
distant  lake.  From  the  grass  arose,  with  measured 
sweep,  a  gull,  and  bathed  luxuriously  in  blue 
waves  of  air.  And  now  she  has  vanished  on  high, 
and  appears  only  as  a  black  dot :  now  she  has  turned 
her  wings,  and  shines  in  the  sunlight.  Deuce  take 
you,  steppes,  how  beautiful  you  are ! " 1 

1  Translated  by  Isabel  Hapgood. 
46 


GOGOL 

The  whole  book  is  dominated  by  the  gigantic 
figure  of  old  Taras  Bulba,  who  loves  food  and 
drink,  but  who  would  rather  fight  than  eat.  Like 
so  many  Russian  novels,  it  begins  at  the  beginning, 
not  at  the  second  or  third  chapter.  The  two  sons 
of  Taras,  wild  cubs  of  the  wild  old  wolf,  return  from 
school,  and  are  welcomed  by  their  loving  father, 
not  with  kisses  and  affectionate  greeting,  but  with 
a  joyous  fist  combat,  while  the  anxious  mother 
looks  on  with  tears  of  dismayed  surprise.  After 
the  sublime  rage  of  fighting,  which  proves  to  the 
old  man's  satisfaction  that  his  sons  are  really 
worthy  of  him,  comes  the  sublime  joy  of  brandy, 
and  a  prodigious  feast,  which  only  the  stomachs 
of  fifteenth  century  Cossacks  could  survive.  Then 
despite  the  anguish  of  the  mother  —  there  was  no 
place  for  the  happiness  of  women  in  Cossack  life 
—  comes  the  crushing  announcement  that  on  the 
morrow  all  three  males  will  away  to  the  wars, 
from  which  not  one  of  them  will  return.  One  of 
the  most  poignant  scenes  that  Gogol  has  written 
is  the  picture  of  the  mother,  watching  the  whole 
night  long  by  her  sleeping  sons  —  who  pass  the 
few  hours  after  the  long  separation  and  before  the 
eternal  parting,  in  deep,  unconscious  slumber. 

The  various  noisy  parliaments  and  bloody  com- 
bats are  pictured  by  a  pen  alive  with  the  subject ; 
of  the  two  sons,  one  is  murdered  by  his  father  for 
47 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

preferring  the  love  of  a  Capulet  to  the  success  of 
the  Montagues ;  the  other,  Ostap,  is  taken  prisoner, 
and  tortured  to  death.  Taras,  in  disguise,  watches 
the  appalling  sufferings  of  his  son ;  just  before  his 
death,  Ostap,  who  had  not  uttered  a  word  during 
the  prolonged  and  awful  agony,  cries  out  to  the 
hostile  sky,  like  the  bitter  cry  My  God,  why  hast 
thou  forsaken  me?  "Father!  where  are  you?  do 
you  hear  all?"  and  to  the  amazement  of  the  boy 
and  his  torturers,  comes,  like  a  voice  from  heaven, 
the  shout,  "I  hear!" 

Fearful  is  the  vengeance  that  Taras  Bulba  takes 
on  the  enemy ;  fearful  is  his  own  death,  lashed  to  a 
tree,  and  burned  alive  by  his  foes.  He  dies,  merrily 
roaring  defiant  taunts  at  his  tormentors.  And 
Gogol  himself  closes  his  hero's  eyes  with  the  ques- 
tion, "Can  any  fire,  flames,  or  power  be  found  on 
earth,  which  are  capable  of  overpowering  Russian 
strength  ?  " 

In  its  particular  class  of  fiction,  Taras  Bulba  has 
no  equal  except  the  Polish  trilogy  of  Sienkiewicz; 
and  Gogol  produces  the  same  effect  in  a  small 
fraction  of  the  space  required  by  the  other.  This 
is  of  course  Romanticism  rampant,  which  is  one 
reason  why  it  has  not  been  highly  appreciated  by 
the  French  critics.  And  it  is  indeed  as  contrary 
to  the  spirit  of  Russian  fiction  as  it  is  to  the  French 
spirit  of  restraint.  It  stands  alone  in  Russian  liter- 
48 


GOGOL 

ature,  apart  from  the  regular  stream,  unique  and 
unapproachable,  not  so  much  one  of  the  great 
Russian  novels  as  a  soul-thrilling  poem,  commem- 
orating the  immortal  Cossack  heart. 

Gogol  followed  up  the  Evenings  on  a  Farm  near 
the  Dikanka  with  two  other  volumes  of  stories  and 
sketches,  of  which  the  immortal  Taras  Bulba  was 
included  in  one.  These  other  tales  show  an  aston- 
ishing advance  in  power  of  conception  and  mastery 
of  style.  I  do  not  share  the  general  enthusiasm 
for  the  narrative  of  the  comically  grotesque  quarrel 
between  the  two  Ivans :  but  the  three  stories, 
Old-fashioned  Farmers,  The  Portrait,  and  The 
Cloak,  show  to  a  high  degree  that  mingling  of 
Fantasy  with  Reality  that  is  so  characteristic  of 
this  author.  The  obsolete  old  pair  of  lovers  in 
Old-fashioned  Farmers  is  one  of  the  most  charming 
and  winsome  things  that  Gogol  wrote  at  this 
period:  it  came  straight  from  the  depths  of  his 
immeasurable  tenderness.  It  appealed  to  that  Pity 
which,  as  every  one  has  noticed,  is  a  fundamental 
attribute  of  the  national  Russian  character.  In 
The  Portrait,  which  is  partly  written  in  the 
minute  manner  of  Balzac,  and  partly  with  the 
imaginative  fantastic  horror  of  Poe  and  Hoffmann, 
we  have  the  two  sides  of  Gogol's  nature  clearly  re- 
flected. Into  this  strange  story  he  has  also  indi- 
cated two  of  the  great  guiding  principles  of  his 
E  49 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

life:  his  intense  democratic  sympathies,  and  his 
devotion  to  the  highest  ideals  in  Art.  When  the 
young  painter  forsakes  poverty  and  sincerity  for 
wealth  and  popularity,  he  steadily  degenerates  as 
an  artist  and  eventually  loses  his  soul.  The  end- 
ing of  the  story,  with  the  disappearance  of  the 
portrait,  is  remarkably  clever.  The  brief  tale 
called  The  Cloak  or  The  Overcoat  has  great  signifi- 
cance in  the  history  of  Russian  fiction,  for  all  Russian 
novelists  have  been  more  or  less  influenced  by  it. 
Its  realism  is  so  obviously  and  emphatically  real- 
istic that  it  becomes  exaggeration,  but  this  does 
not  lessen  its  tremend  us  power :  then  suddenly 
at  the  very  end,  it  leaves  the  ground,  even  the  air, 
and  soars  away  into  the  ether  of  Romance. 

Although  these  stories  were  translated  into 
English  by  Miss  Hapgood  over  twenty  years  ago, 
they  have  never  had  any  vogue  among  English- 
speaking  people,  and  indeed  they  have  produced 
very  little  impression  anywhere  outside  of  Russia. 
This  is  a  misfortune  for  the  world,  for  Gogol  was 
assuredly  one  of  the  great  literary  geniuses  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  and  he  richly  repays  attentive 
reading.  In  Russia  he  has  been  appreciated,  im- 
mensely respected  and  admired,  from  the  day 
that  he  published  his  first  book ;  but  his  lack  of 
reputation  abroad  is  indicated  by  the  remark  of 
Mr.  Baring  in  1910,  "the  work  of  Gogol  may  be 


GOGOL 

said  to  be  totally  unknown  in  England."  This 
statement  is  altogether  too  sweeping,  but  it  counts 
as  evidence. 

Despite  Gogol's  undoubted  claim  to  be  regarded 
as  the  founder  of  Russian  fiction,  it  is  worth  re- 
membering that  of  the  three  works  on  which  rests 
his  international  fame,  two  cannot  possibly  be 
called  germinal.  The  drama  Revizor  is  the  best 
comedy  in  the  Russian  language;  but,  partly  for 
that  very  reason,  it  produced  no  school.  The 
romance  Taras  Bulba  has  no  successful  follower  in 
Russian  literature,  and  brought  forth  no  fruit  any- 
where for  fifty  years,  until  the  appearance  of  the 
powerful  fiction-chronicles  by  Sienkiewicz.  It  has 
all  the  fiery  ardour  of  a  young  genius;  its  very 
exaggeration,  its  delight  in  bloody  battle,  show 
a  certain  immaturity ;  it  breathes  indeed  the  spirit 
of  youth.  With  the  exception  of  The  Cloak,  Gogol 
had  by  1840  written  little  to  indicate  the  direction 
that  the  best  part  of  Russian  literature  was  to  take. 
It  was  not  until  the  publication  of  Dead  Souls 
that  Russia  had  a  genuine  realistic  novel.  This 
book  is  broad  enough  in  scope  and  content  to  serve 
as  the  foundation  of  Russian  fiction,  and  to  sustain 
the  wonderful  work  of  Turgenev,  Tolstoi,  and 
Dostoevski.  All  the  subsequent  great  novels  in 
Russia  point  back  to  Dead  Souls. 

No  two  books  could  possibly  show  a  greater 
51 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

contrast  than  Taras  Bulba  and  Dead  Souls.  One 
reveals  an  extraordinary  power  of  condensation : 
the  other  an  infinite  expansion.  One  deals  with 
heroes  and  mighty  exploits;  the  other  with  positively 
commonplace  individuals  and  the  most  trivial 
events.  One  is  the  revival  of  the  glorious  past; 
the  other  a  reflection  of  the  sordid  present.  One 
is  painted  with  the  most  brilliant  hues  of  Roman- 
ticism, and  glows  with  the  essence  of  the  Romantic 
spirit  —  Aspiration;  the  other  looks  at  life  through 
an  achromatic  lens,  and  is  a  catalogue  of  Realities. 
To  a  certain  extent,  the  difference  is  the  difference 
between  the  bubbling  energy  of  youth  and  the 
steady  energy  of  middle  age.  For,  although  Gogol 
was  still  young  in  years  when  he  composed  Dead 
Souls,  the  decade  that  separated  the  two  works  was 
for  the  author  a  constant  progress  in  disillusion. 
In  the  sixth  chapter  of  the  latter  book,  Gogol 
has  himself  revealed  the  sad  transformation  that 
had  taken  place  in  his  own  mind,  and  that  made 
his  genius  express  itself  hi  so  different  a  manner :  — 
"Once,  long  ago,  in  the  years  of  my  youth,  in 
those  beautiful  years  that  rolled  so  swiftly,  I  was 
full  of  joy,  charmed  when  I  arrived  for  the  first 
time  in  an  unknown  place;  it  might  be  a  farm, 
a  poor  little  district  town,  a  large  village,  a 
small  settlement:  my  eager,  childish  eyes  always 
found  there  many  interesting  objects.  Every 
52 


GOGOL 

building,  everything  that  showed  an  individual 
touch,  enchanted  my  mind,  and  left  a  vivid  im- 
pression. .  .  .  To-day  I  travel  through  all  the 
obscure  villages  with  profound  indifference,  and  I 
gaze  coldly  at  their  sad  and  wretched  appearance : 
my  eyes  linger  over  no  object,  nothing  grotesque 
makes  me  smile :  that  which  formerly  made  me 
burst  out  in  a  roar  of  spontaneous  laughter,  and 
filled  my  soul  with  cheerful  animation,  now  passes 
before  my  eyes  as  though  I  saw  it  not,  and  my 
mouth,  cold  and  rigid,  finds  no  longer  a  word  to 
say  at  the  very  spectacle  which  formerly  possessed 
the  secret  of  filling  my  heart  with  ecstasy.  O 
my  youth  !  O  my  fine  simplicity  !  " 

Gogol  spent  the  last  fifteen  years  of  his  life 
writing  this  book,  and  he  left  it  unfinished.  Push- 
kin gave  him  the  subject,  as  he  had  for  Revizor. 
One  day,  when  the  two  men  were  alone  together, 
Pushkin  told  him,  merely  as  a  brief  anecdote,  of 
an  unscrupulous  promoter,  who  went  about  buying 
up  the  names  of  dead  serfs,  thus  enabling  their 
owners  to  escape  payment  of  the  taxes  which  were 
still  in  force  after  the  last  registration.  The  names 
were  made  over  to  the  new  owner,  with  all  legal 
formalities,  so  that  he  apparently  possessed  a  large 
fortune,  measured  in  slaves ;  these  names  the  pro- 
moter transferred  to  a  remote  district,  with  the 
intention  of  obtaining  a  big  cash  loan  from  some 
S3 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

bank,  giving  his  fictitious  property  as  security ;  but 
he  was  quickly  caught,  and  his  audacious  scheme 
came  to  nothing.  The  story  stuck  in  Gogol's 
mind,  and  he  conceived  the  idea  of  a  vast  novel, 
in  which  the  travels  of  the  collector  of  dead  souls 
should  serve  as  a  panorama  of  the  Russian  people. 
Both  Gogol  and  Pushkin  thought  of  Don  Quixote, 
the  spirit  of  which  is  evident  enough  in  this  book. 

Not  long  after  their  interview,  Gogol  wrote  to 
Pushkin :  "I  have  begun  to  write  Dead  Souls.  The 
subject  expands  into  a  very  long  novel,  and  I  think 
it  will  be  amusing,  but  now  I  am  only  at  the  third 
chapter.  ...  I  wish  to  show,  at  least  from  one 
point  of  view,  all  Russia."  Gogol  declared  that 
he  did  not  write  a  single  line  of  these  early  chapters 
without  thinking  how  Pushkin  would  judge  it, 
at  what  he  would  laugh,  at  what  he  would  applaud. 
When  he  read  aloud  from  the  manuscript,  Pushkin, 
who  had  listened  with  growing  seriousness,  cried, 
"  God  !  what  a  sad  country  is  Russia  ! "  and  later 
he  added,  "  Gogol  invents  nothing ;  it  is  the  simple 
truth,  the  terrible  truth." 

The  first  part  of  his  work,  containing  the  first 
eleven  chapters,  or  "songs,"  was  published  in  May 
1842.  For  the  rest  of  his  life,  largely  spent  abroad, 
Gogol  worked  fitfully  at  the  continuation  of  his 
masterpiece.  Ill  health,  nervous  depression,  and 
morbid  asceticism  preyed  upon  his  mind;  in  1845 
S4 


GOGOL 

he  burned  all  that  he  had  written  of  the  second 
volume.  But  he  soon  began  to  rewrite  it,  though 
he  made  slow  and  painful  progress,  having  too 
much  of  improductive  slave  either  to  complete  it  or 
to  be  satisfied  with  it.  At  Moscow,  a  short  time 
before  his  death,  in  a  night  of  wakeful  misery,  he 
burned  a  whole  mass  of  his  manuscripts.  Among 
them  was  unfortunately  the  larger  portion  of  the 
rewritten  second  part  of  Dead  Souls.  Various 
reasons  have  been  assigned  as  the  cause  of  the 
destruction  of  his  book  —  some  have  said,  it  was 
religious  remorse  for  having  written  the  novel  at  all ; 
others,  rage  at  adverse  criticism ;  others,  his  own 
despair  at  not  having  reached  ideal  perfection.  But 
it  seems  probable  that  its  burning  was  simply  a 
mistake.  Looking  among  his  papers,  a  short 
time  after  the  conflagration,  he  cried  out,  "My  God  ! 
what  have  I  done !  that  isn't  what  I  meant  to 
burn !  "  But  whatever  the  reason,  the  precious 
manuscript  was  forever  lost ;  and  the  second  part 
of  the  work  remains  sadly  incomplete,  partly 
written  up  from  rough  notes  left  by  the  author, 
partly  supplied  by  another  hand. 

Dead  Souls  is  surely  a  masterpiece,  but  a  master- 
piece of  life  rather  than  of  art.  Even  apart  from 
its  unfinished  shape,  it  is  characterised  by  that  form- 
lessness so  distinctive  of  the  great  Russian  novel- 
ists —  the  sole  exception  being  Turgenev.  The 
55 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

story  is  so  full  of  disgressions,  of  remarks  in  mock 
apology  addressed  to  the  reader,  of  comparisons  of 
the  Russian  people  with  other  nations,  of  general 
disquisitions  on  realism,  of  glowing  soliloquies  in 
various  moods,  that  the  whole  thing  is  a  kind  of 
colossal  note-book.  Gogol  poured  into  it  all  his 
observations,  reflections,  and  comments  on  life. 
It  is  not  only  a  picture  of  Russia,  it  is  a  spiritual 
autobiography.  It  is  without  form,  but  not  void. 
Gogol  called  his  work  a  poem;  and  he  could  not 
have  found  a  less  happy  name.  Despite  lyrical 
interludes,  it  is  as  far  removed  from  the  nature  and 
form  of  Poetry  as  it  is  from  Drama.  It  is  a  suc- 
cession of  pictures  of  life,  given  with  the  utmost 
detail,  having  no  connection  with  each  other,  and 
absolutely  no  crescendo,  no  movement,  no  approach 
to  a  climax.  The  only  thread  that  holds  the  work 
together  is  the  person  of  the  travelling  promoter, 
Chichikov,  whose  visits  to  various  communities 
give  the  author  the  opportunity  he  desired.  After 
one  has  grasped  the  plan  of  the  book,  the  purpose 
of  Chichikov 's  mission,  which  one  can  do  in  two 
minutes,  one  may  read  the  chapters  in  any  hap- 
hazard order.  Fortunately  they  are  all  interesting 
in  their  photographic  reality. 

The  whole  thing  is  conceived  in  the  spirit  of 
humour,  and  its  author  must  be  ranked  among  the 
great  humorists  of  all  time.    There  is  an  absurdity 
56 


GOGOL 

about  the  mission  of  the  chief  character,  which  gives 
rise  to  all  sorts  of  ludicrous  situations.  It  takes 
time  for  each  serf-owner  to  comprehend  Chichikov's 
object,  and  he  is  naturally  regarded  with  suspicion. 
In  one  community  it  is  whispered  that  he  is  Napo- 
leon, escaped  from  St.  Helena,  and  travelling  in 
disguise.  An  old  woman  with  whom  he  deals  has 
an  avaricious  cunning  worthy  of  a  Norman  peasant. 
The  dialogue  between  the  two  is  a  masterly  com- 
mentary on  the  root  of  all  evil.  But  although  all 
Russia  is  reflected  in  a  comic  mirror,  which  by  its 
very  distortion  emphasises  the  defects  of  each 
character,  Gogol  was  not  primarily  trying  to  write 
a  funny  book.  The  various  scenes  at  dinner  parties 
and  at  the  country  inns  are  laughable ;  but  Gogol's 
laughter,  like  that  of  most  great  humorists,  is  a 
compound  of  irony,  satire,  pathos,  tenderness,  and 
moral  indignation.  The  general  wretchedness  of 
the  serfs,  the  indifference  of  their  owners  to  their 
condition,  the  pettiness  and  utter  meanness  of 
village  gossip,  the  ridiculous  affectations  of  small- 
town society,  the  universal  ignorance,  stupidity, 
and  dulness  —  all  these  are  remorselessly  revealed 
in  the  various  bargains  made  by  the  hero. 

And  what  a  hero !    A  man  neither  utterly  bad 
nor  very  good ;    shrewd  rather  than  intelligent ; 
limited  in  every  way.     He  is  a  Russian,  but  a  uni- 
versal type.    No  one  can  travel  far  in  America  with- 
57 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

out  meeting  scores  of  Chichikovs :  indeed,  he  is  an 
accurate  portrait  of  the  American  promoter,  of  the 
successful  commercial  traveller,  whose  success 
depends  entirely  not  on  the  real  value  and  usefulness 
of  his  stock-in-trade,  but  on  his  knowledge  of  human 
nature  and  the  persuasive  power  of  his  tongue. 
Chichikov  is  all  things  to  all  men. 

Not  content  with  the  constant  interpolation  of 
side  remarks  and  comments,  queries  of  a  politely 
ironical  nature  to  the  reader,  in  the  regular  approved 
fashion  of  English  novels,  Gogol  added  after  the 
tenth  chapter  a  defiant  epilogue,  in  which  he 
explained  his  reasons  for  dealing  with  fact  rather 
than  with  fancy,  of  ordinary  people  rather  than  with 
heroes,  of  commonplace  events  rather  than  with 
melodrama ;  and  then  suddenly  he  tried  to  jar  the 
reader  out  of  his  self-satisfaction,  like  Balzac  in 
Pere  Goriot. 

"Pleased  with  yourselves  more  than  ever,  you 
will  smile  slowly,  and  then  say  with  grave  deliber- 
ation :  '  It  is  true  that  in  some  of  our  provinces  one 
meets  very  strange  people,  people  absolutely  ridic- 
ulous, and  sometimes  scoundrels  too  ! ' 

"Ah,  but  who  among  you,  serious  readers,  I 
address  myself  to  those  who  have  the  humility  of 
the  true  Christian,  who  among  you,  being  alone, 
in  the  silence  of  the  evening,  at  the  time  when  one 
communes  with  oneself,  will  look  into  the  depths  of 
58 


GOGOL 

his  soul  to  ask  in  all  sincerity  this  question? 
'Might  there  not  be  in  me  something  of  Chichi- 
kov?"' 

This  whole  epilogue  is  a  programme  —  the  pro- 
gramme of  the  self-conscious  founder  of  Russian 
Realism.  It  came  from  a  man  who  had  deliberately 
turned  his  back  on  Romanticism,  even  on  the 
romanticism  of  his  friend  and  teacher,  Pushkin, 
and  who  had  decided  to  venture  all  alone  on  a  new 
and  untried  path  in  Russian  literature.  He  fully 
realised  the  difficulties  of  his  task,  and  the  oppo- 
sition he  was  bound  to  encounter.  He  asks  and 
answers  the  two  familiar  questions  invariably 
put  to  the  native  realist.  The  first  is,  "I  have 
enough  trouble  in  my  own  life:  I  see  enough 
misery  and  stupidity  in  the  world :  what  is  the  use 
of  reading  about  it  in  novels?"  The  second  is, 
"Why  should  a  man  who  loves  his  country  uncover 
her  nakedness?" 

Gogol's  realism  differs  in  two  important  aspects 
from  the  realism  of  the  French  school,  whether 
represented  by  Balzac,  Flaubert,  Guy  de  Maupas- 
sant, or  Zola.  He  had  all  the  French  love  of  ve- 
racity, and  could  have  honestly  said  with  the  author 
of  Une  Vie  that  he  painted  Vhumble  verite.  But 
there  are  two  ground  qualities  in  his  realistic  method 
absent  in  the  four  Frenchmen :  humour  and  moral 
force.  Gogol  could  not  repress  the  fun  that  is  so 
59 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

essential  an  element  in  human  life,  any  more  than 
he  could  stop  the  beating  of  his  heart ;  he  saw  men 
and  women  with  the  eyes  of  a  natural  born  humor- 
ist, to  whom  the  utter  absurdity  of  humanity  and 
human  relations  was  enormously  salient.  And  he 
could  not  help  preaching,  because  he  had  bound- 
less sympathy  with  the  weakness  and  suffering  of 
his  fellow-creatures,  and  because  he  believed  with 
all  the  tremendous  force  of  his  character  in  the 
Christian  religion.  His  main  endeavour  was  to 
sharpen  the  sight  of  his  readers,  whether  they 
looked  without  or  within ;  for  not  even  the  greatest 
physician  can  remedy  an  evil,  unless  he  knows  what 
the  evil  is. 

Gogol  is  the  great  pioneer  in  Russian  fiction. 
He  had  the  essential  temperament  of  all  great 
pioneers,  whether  their  goal  is  material  or  spiritual. 
He  had  vital  energy,  resolute  courage,  clear  vision, 
and  an  abiding  faith  that  he  was  travelling  in  the 
right  direction.  Such  a  man  will  have  followers 
even  greater  than  he,  and  he  rightly  shares  in  their 
glory.  He  was  surpassed  by  Turgenev,  Dostoevski, 
and  Tolstoi,  but  had  he  lived,  he  would  have 
rejoiced  in  their  superior  art,  just  as  every  great 
teacher  delights  in  being  outstripped  by  his  pupils. 
He  is  the  real  leader  of  the  giant  three,  and  they 
made  of  his  lonely  path  a  magnificent  highway  for 
human  thought.  They  all  used  him  freely : 
60 


GOGOL 

Tolstoi  could  hardly  have  written  The  Cossacks 
without  the  inspiration  of  Gogol,  Turgenev  must 
have  taken  the  most  beautiful  chapter  in  Virgin 
Soil  directry  from  Old-fashioned  Farmers,  and 
Dostoevski's  first  book,  Poor  Folk,  is  in  many 
places  almost  a  slavish  imitation  of  The  Cloak  — 
and  he  freely  acknowledged  the  debt  in  the  course 
of  his  story.  The  uncompromising  attitude  toward 
fidelity  in  Art  which  Gogol  emphasised  in  The 
Portrait  set  the  standard  for  every  Russian  writer 
who  has  attained  prominence  since  his  day.  No 
one  can  read  Chekhov  and  Andreev  without  being 
conscious  of  the  hovering  spirit  of  the  first  master 
of  Russian  fiction.  He  could  truthfully  have 
adapted  the  words  of  Joseph  Hall :  — 

I  first  adventure  :  follow  me  who  list, 
And  be  the  second  Russian  Realist. 


61 


in 

TURGENEV 

TURGENEV  was  born  on  the  28  October  1818, 
at  Orel,  in  south  central  Russia,  about  half-way 
between  Moscow  and  Kiev.  Thus,  although  the 
temperament  of  Turgenev  was  entirely  different 
from  that  of  Gogol,  he  was  born  not  far  from  the 
latter's  beloved  Ukraine.  He  came  honestly  by 
the  patrician  quality  that  unconsciously  animated 
all  his  books,  for  his  family  was  both  ancient  and 
noble.  His  mother  was  wealthy,  and  in  1817  was 
married  to  a  handsome,  unprincipled  military 
officer  six  years  younger  than  herself.  Their  life 
together  was  an  excellent  example  of  the  exact 
opposite  of  domestic  bliss,  and  in  treating  the  boy 
like  a  culprit,  they  transformed  him  —  as  always 
happens  in  similar  cases  —  into  a  severe  judge  of 
their  own  conduct.  The  father's  unbridled  sensual- 
ity and  the  mother's  unbridled  tongue  gave  a 
succession  of  moving  pictures  of  family  discord 
to  the  inquisitive  eyes  of  the  future  novelist.  His 
childhood  was  anything  but  cheerful,  and  late  in 
life  he  said  he  could  distinctly  remember  the  salt 
taste  of  the  frequent  tears  that  trickled  into  the  cor- 
ners of  his  mouth.  Fortunately  for  all  concerned, 
62 


TURGENEV 

the  father  died  while  Turgenev  was  a  boy,  leaving 
him  with  only  one  —  even  if  the  more  formidable 
—  of  his  parents  to  contend  with.  His  mother 
despised  writers,  especially  those  who  wrote  in 
Russian;  she  insisted  that  Ivan  should  make  an 
advantageous  marriage,  and  "have  a  career";  but 
the  boy  was  determined  never  to  marry,  and  he  had 
not  the  slightest  ambition  for  government  favours. 
The  two  utterly  failed  to  understand  each  other, 
and,  weary  of  his  mother's  capricious  violence  of 
temper,  he  became  completely  estranged.  Years 
later,  in  her  last  illness,  Turgenev  made  repeated 
attempts  to  see  her,  all  of  which  she  angrily  repulsed. 
He  endeavoured  to  see  her  at  the  very  last,  but 
she  died  before  his  arrival.  He  was  then  informed 
that  on  the  evening  of  her  death  she  had  given 
orders  to  have  an  orchestra  play  dance-music  in  an 
adjoining  chamber,  to  distract  her  mind  during  the 
final  agony.  And  her  last  thought  was  an  attempt 
to  ruin  Ivan  and  his  brother  by  leaving  orders  to 
have  everything  sold  at  a  wretched  price,  and  to  set 
fire  to  other  parts  of  the  property.  His  comment 
on  his  dead  mother  was  "Enfin,  il  faut  oublier." 

It  is  significant  that  Turgenev  has  nowhere  in 
all  his  novels  portrayed  a  mother  who  combined 
intelligence  with  goodness. 

French,  German,  and  English  Turgenev  learned 
as  a  child,  first  from  governesses,  and  then  from 
63 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

regular  foreign  tutors.  The  language  of  his  own 
country,  of  which  he  was  to  become  the  greatest 
master  that  has  ever  lived,  he  was  forced  to  learn 
from  the  house-servants.  His  father  and  mother 
conversed  only  in  French ;  his  mother  even  prayed 
in  French.  Later,  he  studied  at  the  Universities  of 
Moscow,  St.  Petersburg,  and  Berlin.  At  Berlin 
he  breathed  for  the  first  time  the  free  air  of  intel- 
lectual Europe,  and  he  was  never  able  long  to  live 
out  of  that  element  again.  One  of  his  closest  com- 
rades at  the  University  was  Bakunin,  a  hot-headed 
young  Radical,  who  subsequently  became  a  Nihilist 
agitator.  There  is  no  doubt  that  his  fiery  ha- 
rangues gave  Turgenev  much  material  for  his  later 
novels.  It  is  characteristic,  too,  that  while  his  stu- 
dent friends  went  wild  at  the  theatre  over  Schiller, 
Turgenev  immensely  preferred  Goethe,  and  could 
practically  repeat  the  whole  first  part  of  Faust  by 
heart.  Turgenev,  like  Goethe,  was  a  natural 
aristocrat  in  his  manner  and  in  his  literary  taste  — 
and  had  the  same  dislike  for  extremists  of  all  kinds. 
With  the  exception  of  Turgenev's  quiet  but  pro- 
found pessimism,  his  temperament  was  very  similar 
to  that  of  the  great  German  —  such  a  man  will 
surely  incur  the  hatred  of  the  true  Reformer  type. 
Turgenev  was  one  of  the  best  educated  among 
modern  men-of -letters ;  his  knowledge  was  not 
superficial  and  fragmentary,  it  was  solid  and  accu- 
64 


TURGENEV 

rate.    Of   all   modern   novelists,   he  is   the  best 
exponent  of  genuine  culture. 

Turgenev  often  ridiculed  in  his  novels  the  Russian 
Anglo-maniac ;  but  in  one  respect  he  was  more  Eng- 
lish than  the  English  themselves.  This  is  seen  in 
his  passion  for  shooting.  Nearly  all  of  his  trips  to 
Britain  were  made  solely  for  this  purpose,  and  most 
of  the  distinguished  Englishmen  that  he  met,  like 
Tennyson,  he  met  while  visiting  England  for  grouse. 
Shooting,  to  be  sure,  is  corrmon  enough  in  Russia ; 
it  appears  in  Artsybashev's  Sanin,  and  there  was 
a  time  when  Tolstoi  was  devoted  to  this  sport, 
though  it  later  appeared  on  his  long  blacklist.  But 
Turgenev  had  the  passion  for  it  characteristic  only 
of  the  English  race ;  and  it  is  interesting  to  observe 
that  this  humane  and  peace-loving  man  entered 
literature  with  a  gun  hi  his  hand.  It  was  on  his 
various  shooting  excursions  in  Russia  that  he  ob- 
tained so  intimate  a  knowledge  of  the  peasants 
and  of  peasant  life ;  and  his  first  important  book, 
A  Sportsman's  Sketches,  revealed  to  the  world  two 
things :  the  dawn  of  a  new  literary  genius,  and 
the  wretched  condition  of  the  serfs.  This  book  has 
often  been  called  the  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  of  Russia ; 
no  title  could  be  more  absurd.  In  the  whole  range 
of  literary  history,  it  would  be  difficult  to  find  two 
personalities  more  unlike  than  that  of  Turgenev 
and  Mrs  Stowe.  The  great  Russian  utterly  lacked 
F  65 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

the  temperament  of  the  advocate;  but  his  innate 
truthfulness,  his  wonderful  art,  and  his  very  calm- 
ness made  the  picture  of  woe  all  the  more  clear. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  the  book  became,  without 
its  author's  intention,  a  social  document;  there  is 
no  doubt  that  Turgenev,  a  sympathetic  and  highly 
civilised  man,  hated  slavery,  and  that  his  picture  of 
it  helped  in  an  indirect  way  to  bring  about  the 
emancipation  of  the  serfs.  But  its  chief  value  is 
artistic  rather  than  sociological.  It  is  interesting 
that  Uncle  Tom's  CaU.:  and  A  Sportsman's  Sketches 
should  have  appeared  at  about  the  same  time,  and 
that  emancipation  in  each  country  should  have  fol- 
lowed at  about  the  same  interval ;  but  the  parallel 
is  chronological  rather  than  logical.1 

The  year  of  the  publication  of  Turgenev's  book 
(1852)  saw  the  death  of  Gogol :  and  the  new  author 
quite  naturally  wrote  a  public  letter  of  eulogy. 
In  no  other  country  would  such  a  thing  have 
excited  anything  but  favourable  comment;  in 
Russia  it  raised  a  storm;  the  government  —  always 
jealous  of  anything  that  makes  for  Russia's  real 
greatness  —  became  suspicious,  and  Turgenev  was 
banished  to  his  estates.  Like  one  of  his  own  dogs, 
he  was  told  to  "go  home."  Home  he  went,  and 
continued  to  write  books.  Freedom  was  granted 

1  There  is  an  interesting  and  amusing  reference  to  Harriet 
Beecher  Stowe  in  the  fourth  chapter  of  Smoke. 
66 


TURGENEV 

him  a  few  years  later,  and  he  left  Russia  never  to 
return  except  as  a  visitor.  He  lived  first  in  Ger- 
many, and  finally  in  Paris,  one  of  the  literary  lions 
of  the  literary  capital  of  the  world.  There,  on  the 
3  September  1883,  he  died.  His  body  was  taken 
to  Russia,  and  with  that  cruel  perversity  that  makes 
us  speak  evil  of  men  while  they  are  alive  and  sensi- 
tive, and  good  only  when  they  are  beyond  the  reach 
of  our  petty  praise  and  blame,  friends  and  foes 
united  in  one  shout  of  praise  whose  echoes  filled  the 
whole  world. 

Turgenev,  like  Daniel  Webster,  looked  the  part. 
He  was  a  great  grey  giant,  with  the  Russian  winter 
in  his  hair  and  beard.  His  face  in  repose  had  an 
expression  of  infinite  refinement,  infinite  gentleness, 
and  infinite  sorrow.  When  the  little  son  of  Al- 
phonse  Daudet  saw  Turgenev  and  Flaubert  come 
into  the  room,  arm  in  arm,  the  boy  cried  out, 
"Why,  papa,  they  are  giants!"  George  Moore 
said  that  at  a  ball  in  Montmartre,  he  saw  Turgenev 
come  walking  across  the  hall;  he  looked  like  a 
giant  striding  among  pigmies.  Turgenev  had  that 
peculiar  gentle  sweetness  that  so  \\ell  accompanies 
great  bodily  size  and  strength.  His  modesty  was 
the  genuine  humility  of  a  truly  great  man.  He  was 
always  surprised  at  the  admiration  his  books  re- 
ceived, and  amazed  when  he  heard  of  their  suc- 
cess in  America.  Innumerable  anecdotes  are  told 
67 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

illustrating  the  beauty  of  his  character ;  the  most 
recent  to  appear  in  print  is  from  the  late  Mr  Con- 
way,  who  said  that  Turgenev  was  "a  grand  man  in 
every  way,  physically  and  mentally,  intelligence  and 
refinement  in  every  feature.  ...  I  found  him 
modest  almost  to  shyness,  and  in  his  conversation  — 
he  spoke  English  —  never  loud  or  doctrinaire.  At 
the  Walter  Scott  centennial  he  was  present,  —  the 
greatest  man  at  the  celebration, — but  did  not  make 
himself  known.  There  was  an  excursion  to  Abbots- 
ford,  and  carriages  were  provided  for  guests.  One 
in  which  I  was  seated  passed  Turgenev  on  foot. 
I  alighted  and  walked  with  him,  at  every  step 
impressed  by  his  greatness  and  his  simplicity." 
We  shall  not  know  until  the  year  1920  how  far 
Turgenev  was  influenced  by  Madame  Viardot,  nor 
exactly  what  were  his  relations  with  this  extraordi- 
nary woman.  Pauline  Garcia  was  a  great  singer 
who  made  her  first  appearance  in  Petersburg  in 
1843.  Turgenev  was  charmed  with  her,  and  they 
remained  intimate  friends  until  his  death  forty 
years  later.  After  this  event,  she  published  some 
of  his  letters.  She  died  in  Paris  in  1910,  at  the 
age  of  eighty-nine.  It  is  reported  that  among  her 
papers  is  a  complete  manuscript  novel  by  Turgenev, 
which  he  gave  to  her  some  fifty  years  ago,  on  the 
distinct  understanding  that  it  should  not  be  pub- 
lished until  ten  years  after  her  death.  We  must 
68 


TURGENEV 

accordingly  wait  for  this  book  with  what  patience 
we  can  command.  If  this  novel  really  exists,  it  is 
surely  a  strange  sensation  to  know  that  there  is  a 
manuscript  which,  when  published,  is  certain  to  be 
an  addition  to  the  world's  literature.  It  is  infinitely 
more  valuable  on  that  account  than  for  any  li^ht 
it  may  throw  on  the  relations  between  the  two 
individuals. 

When  Madame  Viardot  gave  up  the  opera  in  1864, 
and  went  to  live  at  Baden,  Turgenev  followed  the 
family  thither,  lived  in  a  little  house  close  to  them, 
and  saw  them  every  day.  He  was  on  the  most 
intimate  terms  with  her,  with  her  husband,  and 
with  her  daughters,  whom  he  loved  devotedly. 
He  was  essentially  a  lonely  man,  and  in  this  house- 
hold found  the  only  real  home  he  ever  knew.  It  is 
reported  that  he  once  said  that  he  would  gladly 
surrender  all  his  literary  fame  if  he  had  a  hearth  of 
his  own,  where  there  was  a  woman  who  cared 
whether  he  came  home  late  or  not.  What  direction 
the  influence  of  Madame  Viardot  on  Turgenev  took 
no  one  knows.  Perhaps  she  simply  supplied  him 
with  music,  which  was  one  of  the  greatest  passions 
and  inspirations  of  his  life.  This  alone  would  be 
sufficient  to  account  for  their  intimacy.  Perhaps 
she  merely  stimulated  his  literary  activity,  and 
kept  him  at  his  desk;  for,  like  all  authors  except 
Anthony  Trollope,  he  hated  regular  work.  His 
69 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

definition  of  happiness  is  not  only  a  self-revelation, 
it  will  appeal  to  many  humble  individuals  who  are 
not  writers  at  all.  Being  asked  for  a  definition  of 
happiness,  he  gave  it  in  two  words  —  Remorseless 
Laziness. 

It  is  one  of  the  curious  contradictions  in  human 
nature  that  Tolstoi,  so  aggressive  an  apostle 
of  Christianity,  was  himself  so  lacking  in  the 
cardinal  Christian  virtues  of  meekness,  humility, 
gentleness,  and  admiration  for  others;  and 
that  Turgenev,  who  was  without  religious  belief 
of  any  kind,  should  have  been  so  beautiful  an 
example  of  the  real  kindly  tolerance  and  unselfish 
modesty  that  should  accompany  a  Christian  faith. 
There  is  no  better  illustration  in  modern  history 
of  the  grand  old  name  of  gentleman. 

His  pessimism  was  the  true  Slavonic  pessimism, 
quiet,  profound,  and  undemonstrative.  I  heard  the 
late  Professor  Boyesen  say  that  he  had  never 
personally  known  any  man  who  suffered  like 
Turgenev  from  mere  Despair.  His  pessimism 
was  temperamental,  and  he  very  early  lost  every- 
thing that  resembled  a  definite  religious  belief. 
Seated  in  a  garden,  he  was  the  solitary  witness  of  a 
strife  between  a  snake  and  a  toad ;  this  made  him 
first  doubt  God's  Providence. 

He  was  far  more  helpful  to  Russia,  living  in 
Paris,  than  he  could  have  been  at  home.  Just  as 
70 


TURGENEV 

Ibsen  found  that  he  could  best  describe  social  con- 
ditions in  Norway  from  the  distance  of  Munich  or 
Rome,  just  as  the  best  time  to  describe  a  snow- 
storm is  on  a  hot  summer's  day,  —  for  poets,  as 
Mrs  Browning  said,  are  always  most  present  with 
the  distant,  —  so  Turgenev's  pictures  of  Russian 
character  and  life  are  nearer  to  the  truth  than  if 
he  had  penned  them  in  the  hurly-burly  of  political 
excitement.  Besides,  it  was  through  Turgenev  that 
the  French,  and  later  the  whole  Western  world, 
became  acquainted  with  Russian  literature;  for 
a  long  time  he  was  the  only  Russian  novelist  well 
known  outside  of  his  country.  It  was  also  owing 
largely  to  his  personal  efforts  that  Tolstoi's  work 
first  became  known  in  France.  He  distributed 
copies  to  the  leading  writers  and  men  of  influence, 
and  asked  them  to  arouse  the  public.  Turgenev  had 
a  veritable  genius  for  admiration ;  he  had  recog- 
nised the  greatness  of  his  younger  rival  immediately, 
and  without  a  twinge  of  jealousy.  When  he  read 
Sevastopol,  he  shouted  "Hurrah!"  and  drank  the 
author's  health.  Their  subsequent  friendship  was 
broken  by  a  bitter  and  melancholy  quarrel  which 
lasted  sixteen  years.  Then  after  Tolstoi  had  em- 
braced Christianity,  he  considered  it  his  duty  to 
write  to  Turgenev,  and  suggest  a  renewal  of  their 
acquaintance.  This  was  in  1878.  Turgenev  re- 
plied immediately,  saying  that  all  hostile  feelings 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

on  his  part  had  long  since  disappeared;  that  he 
remembered  only  his  old  friend,  and  the  great 
writer  whom  he  had  had  the  good  fortune  to  salute 
before  others  had  discovered  him.  In  the  summer 
of  that  year  they  had  a  friendly  meeting  in  Russia, 
but  Turgenev  could  not  appreciate  the  importance 
of  Tolstoi's  new  religious  views;  and  that  very 
autumn  Tolstoi  wrote  to  Fet,  "He  is  a  very  dis- 
agreeable man."  At  the  same  time  Turgenev  also 
wrote  to  Fet,  expressing  his  great  pleasure  in  the 
renewal  of  the  old  friendship,  and  saying  that 
Tolstoi's  "name  is  beginning  to  have  a  European 
reputation,  and  we  others,  we  Russians,  have 
known  for  a  long  time  that  he  has  no  rival  among 
us."  In  1880,  Turgenev  returned  to  Russia  to 
participate  in  the  Pushkin  celebration,  and  was 
disappointed  at  Tolstoi's  refusal  to  take  part. 
The  truth  is,  that  Tolstoi  always  hated  Turgenev 
during  the  latter's  lifetime,  while  Turgenev  always 
admired  Tolstoi.  On  his  death-bed,  he  wrote  to 
him  one  of  the  most  unselfish  and  beautiful  letters 
that  one  great  man  ever  sent  to  another. 

"For  a  long  time  I  have  not  written  to  you, 
because  I  was  and  I  am  on  my  death-bed.  I  can- 
not get  well,  it  is  not  even  to  be  thought  of.  I 
write  to  tell  you  how  happy  I  am  to  have  been 
your  contemporary,  and  to  send  you  one  last  peti- 
tion. My  friend  !  resume  your  literary  work  ! 
73 


TURGENEV 

It  is  your  gift,  which  comes  from  whence  comes 
everything  else.  Ah  !  how  happy  I  should  be  if  I 
could  only  think  that  my  words  would  have  some 
influence  on  you  !  .  .  .  I  can  neither  eat  nor 
sleep.  But  it  is  tiresome  to  talk  about  such 
things.  My  friend,  great  writer  of  our  Russian 
land,  listen  to  my  request.  Let  me  know  if  you 
get  this  bit  of  paper,  and  permit  me  once  more  to 
heartily  embrace  you  and  yours.  I  can  write  no 
more.  I  am  exhausted." 

Tolstoi  cannot  be  blamed  for  paying  no  heed  to 
this  earnest  appeal,  because  every  man  must  follow 
his  conscience,  no  matter  whither  it  may  lead.  He 
felt  that  he  could  not  even  reply  to  it,  as  he  had  grown 
so  far  away  from  "literature"  as  he  had  previously 
understood  it.  But  the  letter  is  a  final  illustration 
of  the  modesty  and  greatness  of  Turgenev's  spirit; 
also  of  his  true  Russian  patriotism,  his  desire  to 
see  his  country  advanced  in  the  eyes  of  the  world. 
When  we  reflect  that  at  the  moment  of  his  writing 
this  letter,  he  himself  was  still  regarded  in  Europe 
as  Russia's  foremost  author,  there  is  true  nobility 
in  his  remark,  "How  happy  I  am  to  have  been  your 
contemporary !"  Edwin  Booth  said  that  a  Chris- 
tian was  one  who  rejoiced  in  the  superiority  of  a 
rival.  If  this  be  true,  how  few  are  they  that  shall 
enter  into  the  kingdom  of  God. 

After  the  death  of  Turgenev,  Tolstoi  realised 
73 


ESSAYS   ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

his  greatness  as  he  had  never  done  before.  He 
even  consented  to  deliver  a  public  address  hi  honour 
of  the  dead  man.  In  order  to  prepare  himself  for 
this,  he  began  to  re-read  Turgenev's  books,  and 
wrote  enthusiastically:  "I  am  constantly  thinking 
of  Turgenev  and  I  love  him  passionately.  I  pity 
him  and  I  keep  on  reading  him.  I  live  all  the  time 
with  him.  ...  I  have  just  read  Enough.  What  an 
exquisite  thing  ! "  :  The  date  was  set  for  the  public 
address.  Intense  public  excitement  was  aroused. 
Then  the  government  stepped  in  and  prohibited  it ! 
Turgenev,  like  most  novelists,  began  his  literary 
career  with  the  publication  of  verse.  He  never 
regarded  his  poems  highly,  however,  nor  his  plays, 
of  which  he  wrote  a  considerable  number.  His 
reputation  began,  as  has  been  said,  with  the  appear- 
ance of  A  Sportsman's  Sketches,  which  are  not 
primarily  political  or  social  in  their  intention,  but 
were  written,  like  all  his  works,  from  the  serene 
standpoint  of  the  artist.  They  are  full  of  delicate 
character-analysis,  both  of  men  and  of  dogs ;  they 
clearly  revealed,  even  in  their  melancholy  humour, 
the  actual  condition  of  the  serfs.  But  perhaps  they 
are  chiefly  remarkable  for  their  exquisite  descrip- 
tions of  nature.  Russian  fiction  as  a  whole  is  not 

1  In  1865,  he  wrote  to  Fet,  "Enough  does  not  please  me.  Per- 
sonality and  subjectivity  are  all  right,  so  long  as  there  is  plenty  of 
life  and  passion.  But  his  subjectivity  is  full  of  pain,  without 
life." 

74 


TURGENEV 

notable  for  nature-pictures ;  the  writers  have  either 
not  been  particularly  sensitive  to  beauty  of  sky 
and  landscape,  or  like  Browning,  their  interest  in 
the  human  soul  has  been  so  predominant  that 
everything  else  must  take  a  subordinate  place. 
Turgenev  is  the  great  exception,  and  in  this  field 
he  stands  in  Russian  literature  without  a  rival, 
even  among  the  professional  poets. 

Although  A  Sportsman's  Sketches  and  the  many 
other  short  tales  that  Turgenev  wrote  at  intervals 
during  his  whole  career  are  thoroughly  worth  read- 
ing, his  great  reputation  is  based  on  his  seven  com- 
plete novels,  which  should  be  read  in  the  order  of 
composition,  even  though  they  do  not  form  an 
ascending  climax.  All  of  them  are  short ;  compared 
with  the  huge  novels  so  much  in  vogue  at  this 
moment,  they  look  like  tiny  models  of  massive 
machinery.  Turgenev's  method  was  first  to  write 
a  story  at  great  length,  and  then  submit  it  to  rigid 
and  remorseless  compression,  so  that  what  he  finally 
gave  to  the  public  was  the  quintessence  of  his  art. 
It  is  one  of  his  most  extraordinary  powers  that  he 
was  able  to  depict  so  many  characters  and  so  many 
life  histories  in  so  very  few  words.  The  reader  has 
a  sense  of  absolute  completeness. 

It  was  in  his  first  novel,  Rudin,  that  Turgenev 
made  the  first  full-length  portrait  of  the  typical 
educated  Russian  of  the  nineteenth  century.  In 
75 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

doing  this,  he  added  an  immortal  character  to  the 
world's  literature.  "Such  and  such  a  man  is  a 
Rudin,"  has  been  a  common  expression  for  over 
fifty  years,  as  we  speak  of  the  Tartuffes  and  the 
Pecksniffs.  The  character  was  sharply  individual- 
ised, but  he  stands  as  the  representative  of  an  ex- 
ceedingly familiar  Slavonic  type,  and  no  other  nov- 
elist has  succeeded  so  well,  because  no  other  novelist 
has  understood  Rudin  so  clearly  as  his  creator.  It 
is  an  entire  mistake  to  speak  of  him,  as  so  many  do 
nowadays,  as  an  obsolete  or  rather  a  "transitional" 
type.  The  word  "  transitional "  has  been  altogether 
overworked  in  dealing  with  Turgenev.  Rudins 
are  as  common  in  Russia  to-day  as  they  were  in 
1850 ;  for  although  Turgenev  diagnosed  the  disease 
in  a  masterly  fashion,  he  was  unable  to  suggest  a 
remedy.  So  late  as  1894  Stepniak  remarked,  "it 
may  be  truly  said  that  every  educated  Russian  of 
our  time  has  a  bit  of  Dmitri  Rudin  in  him."  If 
Rudin  is  a  transitional  type,  why  does  the  same  kind 
of  character  appear  in  Tolstoi,  in  Dostoevski,  in 
Gorki,  in  Artsybashev?  Why  has  Sienkiewicz 
described  the  racial  temperament  in  two  words, 
improductivite  slave  ?  It  is  generally  agreed  that  no 
man  has  succeeded  better  than  Chekhov  in  por- 
traying the  typical  Russian  of  the  last  twenty  years 
of  the  nineteenth  century.  In  1894  some  one  sent 
to  him  in  writing  this  question,  "What  should  a 
76 


TURGENEV 

Russian  desire  at  this  present  time  ?  "  He  replied, 
"Desire!  he  needs  most  of  all  desire  —  force  of 
character.  We  have  enough  of  that  whining  shape- 
lessness."  Kropotkin  says  of  him:  "He  knew,  and 
more  than  knew  —  he  felt  with  every  nerve  of  his 
poetical  mind  —  that,  apart  from  a  handful  of 
stronger  men  and  women,  the  true  curse  of  the 
Russian  'intellectual'  is  the  weakness  of  his  will, 
the  insufficient  strength  of  his  desires.  Perhaps 
he  felt  it  in  himself.  .  .  .  This  absence  of  strong 
desire  and  weakness  of  will  he  continually,  over  and 
over  again,  represented  in  his  heroes.  But  this 
predilection  was  not  a  mere  accident  of  tempera- 
ment and  character.  It  was  a  direct  product  of 
the  times  he  lived  in."  If  it  was,  as  Kropotkin 
says,  a  direct  product  of  the  times  he  lived  in,  then 
Rudin  is  not  a  transitional  type,  for  the  direct 
product  of  the  forties  and  fifties,  when  compared 
with  the  direct  product  of  the  eighties  and  nineties, 
is  precisely  the  same.  Turgenev's  Rudin  is  far 
from  obsolete.  He  is  the  educated  Slav  of  all  time ; 
he  to  a  large  extent  explains  mapless  Poland,  and 
the  political  inefficiency  of  the  great  empire  of 
Russia.  There  is  not  a  single  person  in  any  English 
or  American  novel  who  can  be  said  to  represent  his 
national  type  in  the  manner  of  Rudin.  When  we 
remember  the  extreme  brevity  of  the  book,  it  was 
an  achievement  of  the  highest  genius. 
77 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

Rudin,  like  the  Duke  in  The  Statue  and  the  Bust, 
is  a  splendid  sheath  without  a  sword,  "empty  and 
fine  like  a  swordless  sheath."  His  mind  is  covered 
with  the  decorations  of  art,  music,  philosophy,  and 
all  the  ornaments  engraved  on  it  by  wide  travel, 
sound  culture,  and  prolonged  thought ;  but  he  can 
do  no  execution  with  it,  because  there  is  no  single, 
steady,  informing  purpose  inside.  The  moment  the 
girl's  resolution  strikes  against  him,  he  gives  forth  a 
hollow  sound.  He  is  like  a  stale  athlete,  who  has 
great  muscles  and  no  vitality.  To  call  him  a  hypo- 
crite would  be  to  misjudge  him  entirely.  He  is 
more  subtle  and  complex  than  that.  One  of  his 
acquaintances,  hearing  him  spoken  of  as  Tartuffe, 
replies,  "No,  the  point  is,  he  is  not  a  Tartuffe. 
Tartuffe  at  least  knew  what  he  was  aiming  at." 
A  man  of  small  intelligence  who  knows  exactly  what 
he  wants  is  more  likely  to  get  it  than  a  man  of 
brilliant  intelligence  who  doesn't  know  what  he 
wants,  is  to  get  anything,  or  anywhere. 

Perhaps  Turgenev,  who  was  the  greatest  diag- 
nostician among  all  novelists,  felt  that  by  constantly 
depicting  this  manner  of  man  Russia  would  realise 
her  cardinal  weakness,  and  some  remedy  might  be 
found  for  it  —  just  as  the  emancipation  of  the  serfs 
had  been  partly  brought  about  by  his  dispassionate 
analysis  of  their  condition.  Perhaps  he  repeated 
this  character  so  often  because  he  saw  Rudin  in  his 
78 


TURGENEV 

own  heart.  At  all  events,  he  never  wearied  of 
showing  Russians  what  they  were,  and  he  took  this 
means  of  showing  it.  In  nearly  all  his  novels,  and 
in  many  of  his  short  tales,  he  has  given  us  a  whole 
gallery  of  Rudins  under  various  names.  In  Ada, 
for  example,  we  have  a  charming  picture  of  the 
young  painter,  Gagin. 

"Gagin  showed  me  all  his  canvases.  In  his 
sketches  there  was  a  good  deal  of  life  and  truth,  a 
certain  breadth  and  freedom ;  but  not  one  of  them 
was  finished,  and  the  drawing  struck  me  as  careless 
and  incorrect.  I  gave  candid  expression  to  my 
opinion. 

"'Yes,  yes,'  he  assented,  with  a  sigh,  'you're 
right;  it's  all  very  poor  and  crude;  what's  to  be 
done?  I  haven't  had  the  training  I  ought  to 
have  had ;  besides,  one's  cursed  Slavonic  slackness 
gets  the  better  of  one.  While  one  dreams  of  work, 
one  soars  away  in  eagle  flight;  one  fancies  one's 
going  to  shake  the  earth  out  of  its  place  —  but 
when  it  comes  to  doing  anything,  one's  weak  and 
weary  directly.'" 

The  heroine  of  Rttdin,  the  young  girl  Natalya,  is  a 
faint  sketch  of  the  future  Lisa.  Turgenev's  girls 
never  seem  to  have  any  fun ;  how  different  they  are 
from  the  twentieth  century  American  novelist's 
heroine,  for  whom  the  world  is  a  garden  of  delight, 
with  exceedingly  attractive  young  men  as  garden- 
79 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

ers  !  These  Russian  young  women  are  grave,  seri- 
ous, modest,  religious,  who  ask  and  expect  little  for 
themselves,  and  who  radiate  feminine  charm.  They 
have  indomitable  power  of  will,  characters  of  rock- 
like  steadfastness,  enveloped  in  a  disposition  of 
ineffable  sweetness.  Of  course  they  at  first  fall 
an  easy  prey  to  the  men  who  have  the  gift  of  elo- 
quence; for  nothing  hypnotises  a  woman  more 
speedily  than  noble  sentiments  in  the  mouth  of  a 
man.  Her  whole  being  vibrates  in  mute  adoration, 
like  flowers  to  the  sunlight.  The  essential  goodness 
of  a  woman's  heart  is  fertile  soil  for  an  orator, 
whether  he  speaks  from  the  platform  or  in  a  con- 
servatory. Natalya  is  limed  almost  instantly  by 
the  honey  of  Rudin's  language,  and  her  virgin  soul 
expands  at  his  declaration  of  love.  Despite  the 
opposition  of  her  mother,  despite  the  iron  bonds  of 
convention,  she  is  ready  to  forsake  all  and  follow 
him.  To  her  unspeakable  amazement  and  dismay, 
she  finds  that  the  great  orator  is  vox,  et  praeterea 
nihil. 

" '  And  what  advice  can  I  give  you,  Natalya 
Alexyevna  ? ' 

" '  What  advice  ?  You  are  a  man ;  I  am  used  to 
trusting  to  you,  I  shall  trust  you  to  the  end.  Tell 
me,  what  are  your  plans  ? ' 

" '  My  plans  —  Your  mother  certainly  will  turn 
me  out  of  the  house.' 

80 


TURGENEV 

" '  Perhaps.  She  told  me  yesterday  that  she  must 
break  off  all  acquaintance  with  you.  But  you  do 
not  answer  my  question.' 

"'What  question?' 

" '  What  do  you  think  we  must  do  now  ? ' 

" '  What  we  must  do  ? '  replied  Rudin ;  '  of  course 
submit.' 

"'Submit?'  repeated  Natalya  slowly,  and  her 
lips  turned  white. 

"'Submit  to  destiny,'  continued  Rudin.  'What 
is  to  be  done?'" 

But,  although  the  average  Anglo-Saxon  reader  is 
very  angry  with  Rudin,  he  is  not  altogether  con- 
temptible. If  every  man  were  of  the  Roosevelt 
type,  the  world  would  become  not  a  fair  field,  but 
a  free  fight.  We  need  Roosevelts  and  we  need 
Rudins.  The  Rudins  allure  to  brighter  worlds, 
even  if  they  do  not  lead  the  way.  If  the  ideals 
they  set  before  us  by  their  eloquence  are  true, 
their  own  failures  do  not  negate  them.  Whose 
fault  is  it  if  we  do  not  reach  them?  Lezhnyov 
gives  the  inefficient  Rudin  a  splendid  eulogy. 

"  Genius,  very  likely  he  has !  but  as  for  being 
natural.  .  .  .  That's  just  his  misfortune,  that 
there's  nothing  natural  in  him.  ...  I  want  to 
speak  of  what  is  good ;  of  what  is  rare  in  him.  He 
has  enthusiasm ;  and  believe  me,  who  am  a  phleg- 
matic person  enough,  that  is  the  most  precious 
G  81 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

quality  in  our  times.  We  have  all  become  insuffer- 
ably reasonable,  indifferent,  and  slothful;  we  are 
asleep  and  cold,  and  thanks  to  any  one  who  will 
wake  us  up  and  warm  us  !  ...  He  is  not  an  actor, 
as  I  called  him,  nor  a  cheat,  nor  a  scoundrel;  he 
lives  at  other  people's  expense,  not  like  a  swindler, 
but  like  a  child.  .  .  .  He  never  does  anything 
himself  precisely,  he  has  no  vital  force,  no  blood; 
but  who  has  the  right  to  say  that  he  has  not  been  of 
use  ?  that  his  words  have  not  scattered  good  seeds 
in  young  hearts,  to  whom  nature  has  not  denied,  as 
she  has  to  him,  powers  for  action,  and  the  faculty 
of  carrying  out  their  own  ideas?  ...  I  drink  to 
the  health  of  Rudin !  I  drink  to  the  comrade  of 
my  best  years,  I  drink  to  youth,  to  its  hopes,  its 
endeavours,  its  faith,  and  its  purity,  to  all  that  our 
hearts  beat  for  at  twenty ;  we  have  known,  and  shall 
know,  nothing  better  than  that  in  life.  ...  I 
drink  to  that  golden  time,  —  to  the  health  of 
Rudin!" 

It  is  plain  that  the  speaker  is  something  of  a 
Rudin  himself. 

The  next  novel,  A  House  of  Gentlefolk,1  is,  with 
the  possible  exception  of  Fathers  and  Children, 
Turgenev's  masterpiece.  I  know  of  no  novel  which 
gives  a  richer  return  for  repeated  re-readings.  As 
the  title  implies,  this  book  deals,  not  with  an  exciting 

1  In  the  original,  A  Nobleman's  Nest. 
82 


TURGENEV 

narrative,  but  with  a  group  of  characters ;  who  can 
forget  them  ?  Like  all  of  its  author's  works,  it  is  a 
love-story;  this  passion  is  the  mainspring  of  the 
chief  personages,  and  their  minds  and  hearts  are 
revealed  by  its  power.  It  is  commonly  said  that 
Turgenev  lacked  passion ;  one  might  say  with  equal 
truth  that  Wordsworth  lacked  love  of  nature. 
Many  of  his  novels  and  tales  are  tremulous  with 
passion,  but  they  are  never  noisy  with  it.  Like 
the  true  patrician  that  he  was,  he  studied  restraint 
and  reserve.  The  garden  scene  between  Lisa  and 
Lavretsky  is  the  very  ecstasy  of  passion,  although, 
like  the  two  characters,  it  is  marked  by  a  pure  and 
chaste  beauty  of  word  and  action,  that  seems  to 
prove  that  Love  is  something  divine.  Only  the 
truly  virtuous  really  understand  passion  —  just 
as  the  sorrows  of  men  are  deeper  than  the  sorrows  of 
children,  even  though  the  latter  be  accompanied 
by  more  tears.  Those  who  believe  that  the  master- 
passion  of  love  expresses  itself  by  floods  of  words  or 
by  abominable  imagery,  will  understand  Turgenev 
as  little  as  they  understand  life.  In  reading  the 
few  pages  in  which  the  lovers  meet  by  night  in  the 
garden,  one  feels  almost  like  an  intruder  —  as  one 
feels  at  the  scene  of  reconciliation  between  Lear  and 
Cordelia.  It  is  the  very  essence  of  intimacy  —  the 
air  is  filled  with  something  high  and  holy. 
Lisa  is  the  greatest  of  all  Turgenev's  great  hero- 
83 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

ines.  No  one  can  help  being  better  for  knowing 
such  a  girl.  She  is  not  very  beautiful,  she  is  not 
very  accomplished,  not  even  very  quick-witted; 
but  she  has  eine  schone  Seele.  There  is  nothing 
regal  about  her ;  she  never  tries  to  queen  it  in  the 
drawing-room.  She  is  not  proud,  high-spirited,  and 
haughty;  she  does  not  constantly  "draw  herself 
up  to  her  full  height,"  a  species  of  gymnastics  in 
great  favour  with  most  fiction-heroines.  But  she 
draws  all  men  unto  herself.  She  is  beloved  by  the 
two  opposite  extremes  of  manhood  —  Panshin  and 
Lavretsky.  Lacking  beauty,  wit,  and  learning, 
she  has  an  irrepressible  and  an  irresistible  virginal 
charm  —  the  exceedingly  rare  charm  of  youth  when 
it  seeks  not  its  own.  When  she  appears  on  the  scene, 
the  pages  of  the  book  seem  illuminated,  and  her 
smile  is  a  benediction.  She  is  exactly  the  kind  of 
woman  to  be  loved  by  Lavretsky,  and  to  be  desired 
by  a  rake  like  Panshin.  For  a  man  like  Lavretsky 
will  love  what  is  lovely,  and  a  satiated  rake  will 
always  eagerly  long  to  defile  what  is  beyond  his 
reach. 

It  is  contemptuously  said  by  many  critics  — 
why  is  it  that  so  many  critics  lose  sensitiveness  to 
beauty,  and  are  afraid  of  their  own  feelings  ?  —  it 
is  said  that  Lisa,  like  Rudin,  is  an  obsolete  type,  the 
type  of  Russian  girl  of  1850,  and  that  she  is  now 
interesting  only  as  a  fashion  that  has  passed  away, 
84 


TURGENEV 

and  because  of  the  enthusiasm  she  once  awakened. 
We  are  informed,  with  a  shade  of  cynicism,  that  all 
the  Russian  girls  then  tried  to  look  like  Lisa,  and 
to  imitate  her  manner.  Is  her  character  really 
out  of  style  and  out  of  date  ?  If  this  were  true,  it 
would  be  unfortunate ;  for  the  kind  of  girl  that  Lisa 
represents  will  become  obsolete  only  when  purity, 
modesty,  and  gentleness  in  women  become  unat- 
tractive. We  have  not  yet  progressed  quite  so  far 
as  that.  Instead  of  saying  that  Lisa  is  a  type  of 
the  Russian  girl  of  1850,  I  should  say  that  she  is  a 
type  of  the  Ewig-weibliche. 

At  the  conclusion  of  the  great  garden-scene, 
Turgenev,  by  what  seems  the  pure  inspiration  of 
genius,  has  expressed  the  ecstasy  of  love  in  old 
Lemm's  wonderful  music.  It  is  as  though  the  pas- 
sion of  the  lovers  had  mounted  to  that  pitch  where 
language  would  be  utterly  inadequate ;  indeed,  one 
feels  in  reading  that  scene  that  the  next  page  must 
be  an  anti-climax.  It  would  have  been  if  the  author 
had  not  carried  us  still  higher,  by  means  of  an  emo- 
tional expression  far  nobler  than  words.  The  dead 
silence  of  the  sleeping  little  town  is  broken  by 
"strains  of  divine,  triumphant  music.  .  .  .  The 
music  resounded  in  still  greater  magnificence;  a 
mighty  flood  of  melody  —  and  all  his  bliss  seemed 
speaking  and  singing  in  its  strains.  .  .  .  The 
sweet,  passionate  melody  went  to  his  heart  from  the 
85 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

first  note;  it  was  glowing  and  languishing  with 
inspiration,  happiness,  and  beauty ;  it  swelled  and 
melted  away;  it  touched  on  all  that  is  precious, 
mysterious,  and  holy  on  earth.  It  breathed  of 
deathless  sorrow  and  mounted  dying  away  to  the 
heavens." 

Elena,  the  heroine  of  On  the  Eve,  resembles  Lisa 
in  the  absolute  integrity  of  her  mind,  and  in  her 
immovable  sincerity;  but  in  all  other  respects  she 
is  a  quite  different  person.  The  difference  is  simply 
the  difference  between  the  passive  and  the  active 
voice.  Lisa  is  static,  Elena  dynamic.  The  for- 
mer's ideal  is  to  be  good,  the  latter's  is  to  do  good. 
Elena  was  strenuous  even  as  a  child,  was  made 
hotly  angry  by  scenes  of  cruelty  or  injustice,  and 
tried  to  help  everything,  from  stray  animals  to 
suffering  men  and  women.  As  Turgenev  expresses 
it,  "she  thirsted  for  action."  She  is  naturally 
incomprehensible  to  her  conservative  and  ease-lov- 
ing parents,  who  have  a  well-founded  fear  that  she 
will  eventually  do  something  shocking.  Her  father 
says  of  her,  rather  shrewdly:  "Elena  Nikolaevna  I 
don't  pretend  to  understand.  I  am  not  elevated 
enough  for  her.  Her  heart  is  so  large  that  it  em- 
braces all  nature  down  to  the  last  beetle  or  frog, 
everything  in  fact  except  her  own  father."  In  a 
word,  Elena  is  unconventional,  the  first  of  the  in- 
numerable brood  of  the  vigorous,  untrammelled, 
86 


TURGENEV 

defiant  young  women  of  modern  fiction,  who  puzzle 
their  parents  by  insisting  on  "living  their  own  life." 
She  is  only  a  faint  shadow,  however,  of  the  type  so 
familiar  to-day  in  the  pages  of  Ibsen,  Bjb'rnson,  and 
other  writers.  Their  heroines  would  regard  Elena 
as  timid  and  conventional,  for  with  all  her  self- 
assertion,  she  still  believes  in  God  and  marriage, 
two  ideas  that  to  our  contemporary  emancipated 
females  are  the  symbols  of  slavery. 

Elena,  with  all  her  virtues,  completely  lacks 
the  subtle  charm  of  Lisa ;  for  an  aggressive,  inde- 
pendent, determined  woman  will  perhaps  lose 
something  of  the  charm  that  goes  with  mystery. 
There  is  no  mystery  about  Elena,  at  all  events; 
and  she  sees  through  her  various  adorers  with  eyes 
unblinded  by  sentiment.  To  an  artist  who  makes 
love  to  her  she  says:  "I  believe  in  your  repentance 
and  I  believe  in  your  tears.  But  it  seems  to  me 
that  even  your  repentance  amuses  you  —  yes,  and 
your  tears  too."  Naturally  there  is  no  Russian 
fit  to  be  the  mate  of  this  incarnation  of  Will.  The 
hero  of  the  novel,  and  the  man  who  captures  the 
proud  heart  of  Elena,  is  a  foreigner  —  a  Bulgarian, 
who  has  only  one  idea,  the  liberation  of  his  country. 
He  is  purposely  drawn  in  sharp  contrast  to  the  cul- 
tivated, charming  Russian  gentlemen  with  whom  he 
talks.  Indeed,  he  rather  dislikes  talk,  an  unusual 
trait  in  a  professional  reformer.  Elena  is  immedi- 
87 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

ately  conquered  by  the  laconic  answer  he  makes  to 
her  question,  "  You  love  your  country  very  dearly  ?  " 
"That  remains  to  be  shown.  When  one  of  us  dies 
for  her,  then  one  can  say  he  loved  his  country." 
Perhaps  it  is  hypercritical  to  observe  that  in  such  a 
case  others  would  have  to  say  it  for  him. 

He  proves  that  he  is  a  man  of  action  in  a  humor- 
ous incident.  At  a  picnic,  the  ladies  are  insulted 
by  a  colossal  German,  even  as  Gemma  is  insulted 
by  a  German  in  Torrents  of  Spring.  Insarov  is  not 
a  conventional  person,  but  he  immediately  performs 
an  act  that  is  exceedingly  conventional  in  fiction, 
though  rare  enough  in  real  life.  Although  he  is 
neither  big,  nor  strong,  nor  in  good  health,  he  inflicts 
corporal  chastisement  on  the  brute  before  his  lady's 
eyes  —  something  that  pleases  women  so  keenly, 
and  soothes  man's  vanity  so  enormously,  that  it 
is  a  great  pity  it  usually  happens  only  in  books.  He 
lifts  the  giant  from  the  ground  and  pitches  him 
into  a  pond.  This  is  one  of  the  very  few  scenes  in 
Turgenev  that  ring  false,  that  belong  to  fiction- 
mongers  rather  than  to  fiction-masters.  Nothing 
is  more  delightful  than  to  knock  down  a  husky 
ruffian  who  has  insulted  the  woman  you  love ;  but 
it  is  a  desperate  undertaking,  and  rarely  crowned 
with  success.  For  in  real  life  ruffians  are  sur- 
prisingly unwilling  to  play  this  complaisant  r61e. 

Finding  himself  falling  in  love  with  Elena, 
88 


TURGENEV 

Insarov  determines  to  go  away  like  Lancelot, 
without  saying  farewell.  Elena,  however,  meets 
him  in  a  thunderstorm  —  not  so  sinister  a  storm  as 
the  ^Eneas  adventure  in  Torrents  of  Spring  —  and 
says,  "  I  am  braver  than  you.  I  was  going  to  you." 
She  is  actually  forced  into  a  declaration  of  love. 
This  is  an  exceedingly  difficult  scene  for  a  novelist, 
but  not  too  difficult  for  Turgenev,  who  has  made  it 
beautiful  and  sweet.  Love,  which  will  ruin  Bazarov, 
ennobles  and  stimulates  Insarov;  for  the  strong 
man  has  found  his  mate.  She  will  leave  father  and 
mother  for  his  sake,  and  cleave  unto  him.  And, 
notwithstanding  the  anger  and  disgust  of  her  par- 
ents, she  leaves  Russia  forever  with  her  husband. 

All  Turgenev's  stories  are  tales  of  frustration. 
Rudin  is  destroyed  by  his  own  temperament.  The 
heroes  of  A  House  of  Gentlefolk  and  Torrents  of 
Spring  are  ruined  by  the  malign  machinations  of 
satanic  women.  Bazarov  is  snuffed  out  by  a  capri- 
ciously evil  destiny.  Insarov's  splendid  mind  and 
noble  aspirations  accomplish  nothing,  because  his 
lungs  are  weak.  He  falls  back  on  the  sofa,  and 
Elena,  thinking  he  has  fainted,  calls  for  help.  A 
grotesque  little  Italian  doctor,  with  wig  and  spec- 
tacles, quietly  remarks,  "Signora,  the  foreign 
gentleman  is  dead  —  of  aneurism  in  combination 
with  disease  of  the  lungs." 

This  novel  caused  great  excitement  in  Russia, 
89 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

and  the  title,  On  the  Eve,  was  a  subject  for  vehe- 
ment discussion  everywhere.  What  did  Turgenev 
mean  ?  On  the  eve  of  what  ?  Turgenev  made  no 
answer;  but  over  the  troubled  waters  of  his  story 
moves  the  brooding  spirit  of  creation.  Russians 
must  and  will  learn  manhood  from  foreigners,  from 
men  who  die  only  from  bodily  disease,  who  are  not 
sicklied  o'er  with  the  pale  cast  of  thought.  At  the 
very  close  of  the  book,  one  man  asks  another, 
"Will  there  ever  be  men  among  us?"  And  the 
other  "flourished  his  fingers  and  fixed  his  enig- 
matical stare  into  the  far  distance."  Perhaps 
Turgenev  meant  that  salvation  would  eventually 
come  through  a  woman  —  through  women  like 
Elena.  For  since  her  appearance,  many  are  the 
Russian  women  who  have  given  their  lives  for  their 
country.1 

The  best-known  novel  of  Turgenev,  and  with  the 
possible  exception  of  A  House  of  Gentlefolk,  his  mas- 
terpiece, is  Fathers  and  Children,  which  perhaps  he 
intended  to  indicate  the  real  dawn  suggested  by 
On  the  Eve.  The  terrific  uproar  caused  in  Russia 
by  this  book  has  not  yet  entirely  ceased.  Russian 
critics  are,  as  a  rule,  very  bad  judges  of  Russian 
literature.  Shut  off  from  participation  in  free, 
public,  parliamentary  political  debate,  the  Russians 
of  1860  and  of  to-day  are  almost  certain  to  judge  the 

1  See  an  article  in  the  Forum  for  August,  1910. 
90 


TURGENEV 

literary  value  of  a  work  by  what  they  regard  as  its 
political  and  social  tendency.  Political  bias  is 
absolutely  blinding  in  an  attempt  to  estimate  the 
significance  of  any  book  by  Turgenev;  for  although 
he  took  the  deepest  interest  in  the  struggles  of  his 
unfortunate  country,  he  was,  from  the  beginning  to 
the  end  of  his  career,  simply  a  supreme  artist.  He 
saw  life  deafly  in  its  various  manifestations,  and 
described  it  as  he  saw  it,  from  the  calm  and  lonely 
vantage-ground  of  genius.  Naturally  he  was  both 
claimed  and  despised  by  both  parties.  Here  are 
some  examples  from  contemporary  Russian  criti- 
cism l  (1862): — 

"This  novel  differs  from  others  of  the  same  sort 
in  that  it  is  chiefly  philosophical.  Turgenev  hardly 
touches  on  any  of  the  social  questions  of  his  day. 
His  principal  aim  is  to  place  side  by  side  the  philos- 
ophy of  the  fathers  and  the  philosophy  of  the  chil- 
dren and  to  show  that  the  philosophy  of  the  chil- 
dren is  opposed  to  human  nature  and  therefore 
cannot  be  accepted  in  life.  The  problem  of  the 
novel  is,  as  you  see,  a  serious  one;  to  solve  this 
problem  the  author  ought  to  have  conscientiously 
and  impartially  studied  both  systems  of  speculation 
and  then  only  reach  certain  conclusions.  But  on 

1  To  the  best  of  my  knowledge,  these  reviews  have  never  before 
been  translated.  These  translations  were  made  for  me  by  a 
Russian  friend,  Mr  William  S.  Gordon. 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

its  very  first  pages  you  see  that  the  author  is  defi- 
cient in  every  mental  preparation  to  accomplish 
the  aim  of  his  novel.  He  not  only  has  not  the  slight- 
est understanding  of  the  new  positive  philosophy, 
but  even  of  the  old  ideal  systems  his  knowledge  is 
merely  superficial  and  puerile.  You  could  laugh 
at  the  heroes  of  the  novel  alone  as  you  read  their 
silly  and  'hashy'  discussions  on  the  young  genera- 
tion had  not  the  novel  as  a  whole  been  founded  on 
these  identical  discussions." 

The  radical  critic  Antonovich  condemned  the 
book  in  the  following  terms :  — 

"From  an  artistic  standpoint  the  novel  is  entirely 
unsatisfactory,  not  to  say  anything  more  out  of 
respect  for  the  talent  of  Turgenev,  for  his  former 
merits,  and  for  his  numerous  admirers.  There  is 
no  common  thread,  no  common  action  which  would 
have  tied  together  all  the  parts  of  the  novel;  all 
of  it  is  in  some  way  just  separate  rhapsodies.  .  .  . 
This  novel  is  didactic,  a  real  learned  treatise  written 
in  dialectic  form,  and  each  character  as  he  appears 
serves  as  an  .expression  and  representative  of  a 
certain  opinion  and  direction.  ...  All  the  atten- 
tion of  the  author  is  turned  on  the  principal  hero 
and  the  other  acting  characters,  however,  not  on 
their  personality,  not  on  the  emotions  of  their  souls, 
their  feelings  and  passions,  but  rather  almost  ex- 
clusively on  their  talks  and  reasonings.  This  is 
92 


TURGENEV 

the  reason  why  the  novel,  with  the  exception  of  one 
nice  old  woman,  does  not  contain  a  single  living 
character,  a  single  living  soul,  but  only  some  sort  of 
abstract  ideas,  and  various  movements  which  are 
personified  and  called  by  proper  names.  Tuf- 
genev's  novel  is  not  a  creation  purely  objective; 
in  it  the  personality  of  the  author  steps  out  too 
clearly,  his  sympathies,  his  inspiration,  even  his 
personal  bitterness  and  irritation.  From  this  we 
get  the  opportunity  to  find  in  the  novel  the  personal 
opinions  of  the  author  himself,  and  in  this  we  have 
one  point  to  start  from  —  that  we  should  accept 
as  the  opinions  of  the  author  the  views  expressed 
in  the  novel,  at  least  those  views  which  have  been 
expressed  with  a  noticeable  feeling  for  them  on  the 
part  of  the  author  and  put  into  the  mouths  of  those 
characters  whom  he  apparently  favours.  Had  the 
author  had  at  least  a  spark  of  sympathy  for  the 
'children,'  for  the  young  generation,  had  he  had  at 
least  a  spark  of  true  and  clear  understanding  of  their 
views  and  inclinations,  it  would  have  necessarily 
flashed  out  somewhere  in  the  run  of  the  novel. 

"The  'fathers'  as  opposed  to  the  'children'  are 
permeated  with  love  and  poetry ;  they  are  men, 
modestly  and  quietly  doing  good  deeds ;  they  would 
not  for  the  world  change  their  age.  Even  such  an 
empty  nothing  as  Pavel  Petrovich,  even  he  is 
raised  on  stilts  and  made  a  nice  man.  Turgenev 
93 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

could  not  solve  his  problem;  instead  of  sketching 
the  relations  between  the  'fathers'  and  the  'chil- 
dren' he  wrote  a  panegyric  to  the  'fathers'  and  a 
decrial  against  the  '  children ' ;  but  he  did  not  even 
understand  the  children ;  instead  of  a  decrial  it  was 
nothing  but  a  libel.  The  spreaders  of  healthy  ideas 
among  the  young  generation  he  wanted  to  show  up 
as  corrupters  of  youth,  the  sowers  of  discord  and 
evil,  haters  of  good,  and  in  a  word,  very  devils. 
In  various  places  of  the  novel  we  see  that  his  prin- 
cipal hero  is  no  fool ;  on  the  contrary,  a  very  able 
and  gifted  man,  who  is  eager  to  learn  and  works 
diligently  and  knows  much,  but  notwithstanding 
all  this,  he  gets  quite  lost  in  disputes,  utters  absurdi- 
ties, and  preaches  ridiculous  things,  which  should 
not  be  pardoned  even  in  a  most  narrow  and  limited 
mind.  ...  In  general  the  novel  is  nothing  else 
but  a  merciless  and  destructive  criticism  on  the 
young  generation.  In  all  the  contemporaneous 
questions,  intellectual  movements,  debates  and  ideals 
with  which  the  young  generation  is  occupied,  Tur- 
genev  finds  not  the  least  common  sense  and  gives 
us  to  understand  that  they  lead  only  to  demoralisa- 
tion, emptiness,  prosaic  shallowness,  and  cynicism. 
Turgenev  finds  his  ideal  in  quite  a  different  place, 
namely  in  the  'fathers,'  in  the  more  or  less  old 
generation.  Consequently,  he  draws  a  parallel 
and  contrast  between  the  '  fathers '  and  the  '  chil- 
94 


TURGENEV 

dren,'  and  we  cannot  formulate  the  sense  of  the  novel 
in  this  way ;  among  a  number  of  good  children  there 
are  also  bad  ones  who  are  the  ones  that  are  ridiculed 
in  the  novel ;  this  is  not  its  aim,  its  purpose  is  quite 
different  and  may  be  formulated  thus:  the  chil- 
dren are  bad  and  thus  are  they  represented  in  the 
novel  in  all  their  ugliness;  but  the  'fathers'  are 
good,  which  is  also  proven  in  the  novel." 

One  of  the  very  few  criticisms  from  a  truly  artistic 
standpoint  appeared  in  the  Russian  Herald  during 
the  year  1862,  from  which  a  brief  quotation  must 
suffice :  — 

"Everything  in  this  work  bears  witness  to  the 
ripened  power  of  Turgenev's  wonderful  talent ;  the 
clearness  of  ideas,  the  masterly  skill  in  sketching 
types,  the  simplicity  of  plot  and  of  movement  of 
the  action,  and  moderation  and  evenness  of  the 
work  as  a  whole ;  the  dramatic  element  which  comes 
up  naturally  from  the  most  ordinary  situations ; 
there  is  nothing  superfluous,  nothing  retarding, 
nothing  extraneous.  But  in  addition  to  these  gen- 
eral merits,  we  are  also  interested  in  Turgenev's 
novel  because  in  it  is  caught  and  held  a  current, 
fleeting  moment  of  a  passing  phenomenon,  and  in 
which  a  momentary  phase  of  our  life  is  typically 
drawn  and  arrested  not  only  for  the  time  being 
but  forever." 

These  prophetically  true  words  constitute  a  great 
95 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

exception  to  the  prevailing  contemporary  criticism, 
which,  as  has  been  seen,  was  passionately  unjust. 
Twenty  years  later,  a  Russian  writer,  Boorenin, 
was  able  to  view  the  novel  as  we  see  it  to-day :  — 
"We  can  say  with  assurance  that  since  the  time 
of  Dead  Souls  not  a  single  Russian  novel  made  such 
an  impression  as  Fathers  and  Children  has  made.  A 
deep  mind,  a  no  less  deep  observation,  an  incompar- 
able ability  for  a  bold  and  true  analysis  of  the  phe- 
nomena of  life,  and  for  their  broadest  relations  to 
each  other,  —  all  these  have  shown  themselves  in 
the  fundamental  thought  of  this  positively  histori- 
cal creation.  Turgenev  has  explained  with  life- 
like images  of  'fathers'  and  'children'  the  essence 
of  that  life  struggle  between  the  dying  period  of  the 
nobility  which  found  its  strength  in  the  possession  of 
peasants  and  the  new  period  of  reforms  whose 
essence  made  up  the  principal  element  of  our 
'resurrection'  and  for  which,  however,  none  had 
found  a  real,  true  (bright}  definition.  Turgenev 
not  only  gave  such  a  definition,  not  only  illumined 
the  inner  sense  of  the  new  movement  in  the  life  of 
that  time,  but  he  also  has  pointed  out  its  principal 
characteristic  sign  —  negation  in  the  name  of 
realism,  as  the  opposition  to  the  old  ideally  liberal 
conservatism.  It  is  known  that  he  found  not  only 
an  unusually  appropriate  nickname  for  this  negation, 
but  a  nickname  which  later  became  attached  to  a  cer- 
96 


TURGENEV 

tain  group  of  phenomena  and  types  and  as  such  was 
accepted  not  only  by  Russia  alone  but  by  the  whole  of 
Europe.  The  artist  created  in  the  image  of  Bazarov 
an  exceedingly  characteristic  representative  of  the 
new  formation  of  life,  of  the  new  movement,  and 
christened  it  with  a  wonderfully  fitting  word,  which 
made  so  much  noise,  which  called  forth  so  much 
condemnation  and  praise,  sympathy  and  hatred, 
timid  alarm  and  bold  raving.  We  can  point  out 
but  few  instances  in  the  history  of  literature  of  such 
a  deep  and  lively  stir  called  forth  in  our  literary 
midst  by  an  artistic  creation  and  by  a  type  of  al- 
most political  significance.  This  novel  even  after 
twenty  years  appears  the  same  deep,  bright,  and 
truthful  reflection  of  life,  as  it  was  at  the  moment  of 
its  first  appearance.  Now  its  depth  and  truthful- 
ness seem  even  more  clear  and  arouse  even  more 
wonder  and  respect  for  the  creative  thought  of  the 
artist  who  wrote  it.  In  our  days,  when  the  period 
of  development  pointed  at  by  Turgenev  in  his  cele- 
brated novel  is  almost  entirely  lived  through,  we 
can  only  wonder  at  that  deep  insight  with  which  the 
author  had  guessed  the  fundamental  characteristic 
in  that  life  movement  which  had  celebrated  that 
period.  The  struggle  of  two  social  streams,  the 
anti-reform  and  post-reform  stream,  the  struggle 
of  two  generations ;  the  old  brought  up  on  aestheti- 
cal  idealism  for  which  the  leisure  of  the  nobility, 
H  97 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

made  possible  by  their  rights  over  the  peasants, 
afforded  such  a  fertile  soil ;  and  the  young  genera- 
tion which  was  carried  away  by  realism  and  nega- 
tion, —  this  is  what  made  up  the  essence  of  the 
movement  of  the  epoch  in  the  sixties.  Turgenev 
with  the  instinct  of  genius  saw  through  this  funda- 
mental movement  in  life  and  imaged  it  in  living 
bright  pictures  with  all  its  positive  and  negative, 
pathetic  and  humorous  sides. 

"  In  his  novel  Turgenev  did  not  at  all  side  with  the 
'fathers'  as  the  unsympathetic  progressive  critics 
of  that  time  insisted,  he  did  not  wish  to  in  the  least 
extol  them  above  the  'children'  in  order  to  degrade 
the  latter.  Just  so  he  had  no  intention  of  showing 
up  in  the  character  of  the  representative  of  the  '  chil- 
dren' some  kind  of  model  of  a  'thinking  realist'  to 
whom  the  young  generation  should  have  bowed  and 
imitated,  as  the  progressive  critics  who  received  the 
work  sympathetically  imagined.  Such  a  one-sided 
view  was  foreign  to  the  author ;  he  sketched  both 
the  'fathers'  and  the  'children'  as  far  as  possible 
impartially  and  analytically.  He  spared  neither 
the  'fathers'  nor  the  'children'  and  pronounced  a 
cold  and  severe  judgment  both  on  the  ones  and  the 
others.  He  positively  sings  a  requiem  to  the 
'fathers'  in  the  person  of  the  Kirsanovs,  and  espe- 
cially Paul  Kirsanov,  having  shown  up  their  aris- 
tocratic idealism,  their  sentimental  aestheticism, 
98 


TURGENEV 

almost  in  a  comical  light,  ay  almost  in  caricature,  as 
he  himself  has  justly  pointed  out.  In  the  promi- 
nent representative  of  the  'children,'  Bazarov,  he 
recognized  a  certain  moral  force,  the  energy  of 
character,  which  favourably  contrasts  this  strong 
type  of  realist  with  the  puny,  characterless,  weak- 
willed  type  of  the  former  generation;  but  having 
recognised  the  positive  side  of  the  young  type,  he 
could  not  but  show  up  their  shortcomings  to  life 
and  before  the  people,  and  thus  take  their  laurels 
from  them.  And  he  did  so.  And  now  when  time 
has  sufficiently  exposed  the  shortcomings  01  the 
type  of  the  generation  of  that  time,  we  see  how  right 
the  author  was,  how  deep  and  far  he  saw  into  life, 
how  clearly  he  perceived  the  beginning  and  the  end 
of  its  development.  Turgenev  in  Fathers  and  Chil- 
dren gave  us  a  sample  of  a  real  universal  novel, 
notwithstanding  the  fact  that  its  plot  centres  on  the 
usual  intimate  relations  of  the  principal  characters. 
And  with  what  wonderful  skill  the  author  solves 
this  puzzling  problem  —  to  place  in  narrow,  limited 
frames  the  broadest  and  newest  themes  (content}. 
Hardly  one  of  the  novelists  of  our  age,  beginning 
with  Dickens  and  ending  with  George  Sand  and 
Spielhagen,  has  succeeded  in  doing  it  so  compactly 
and  tersely,  with  such  an  absence  of  the  didactic 
element  which  is  almost  always  present  in  the  works 
of  the  above-mentioned  authors,  the  now  kings  of 
99 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

western  literatures,  with  such  a  full  insight  into  the 
very  heart  of  the  life  movement  which  is  reflected 
in  the  novel.  I  repeat  again,  Fathers  and  Children 
is  thought  of  highly  by  European  critics,  but  years 
will  pass  and  it  will  be  thought  of  even  more  highly. 
It  will  be  placed  in  a  line  with  those  weighty  liter- 
ary creations  in  which  is  reflected  the  basic  move- 
ment of  the  time  which  created  it." 

It  would  have  been  well  for  Turgenev  if  he  could 
have  preserved  an  absolute  silence  under  the  terrific 
storm  of  abuse  that  his  most  powerful  novel  brought 
down  on  his  head ;  it  would  have  been  well  to  let 
the  book  speak  for  itself,  and  trust  to  time  to  make 
the  strong  wine  sweet.  But  this  was  asking  almost 
too  much  of  human  nature.  Stung  by  the  outra- 
geous attacks  of  the  Radicals,  and  suffering  as  only 
a  great  artist  can  suffer  under  what  he  regards  as  a 
complete  misrepresentation  of  his  purpose,  Tur- 
genev wrote  letters  of  explanation,  confession,  irony, 
letters  that  gained  him  no  affection,  that  only  in- 
creased the  perplexity  of  the  public,  and  which  are 
much  harder  to  understand  than  the  work  itself. 
The  prime  difficulty  was  that  in  this  book  Turgenev 
had  told  a  number  of  profound  truths  about  life ; 
and  nobody  wanted  the  truth.  The  eternal  quar- 
rel between  the  old  and  the  young  generation,  the 
eternal  quarrel  between  conservative  and  liberal, 
was  at  that  time  in  Russia  in  an  acute  stage ;  and 


TURGENEV 

everybody  read  Fathers  and  Children  with  a  view  to 
increasing  their  ammunition,  not  with  the  object 
of  ascertaining  the  justice  of  their  cause.  The 
"fathers"  were  of  course  angry  at  Turgenev's 
diagnosis  of  their  weakness;  the  "sons"  went  into 
a  veritable  froth  of  rage  at  what  they  regarded  as 
a  ridiculous  burlesque  of  their  ideas.  But  that  is 
the  penalty  that  a  wise  man  suffers  at  a  time  of 
strife ;  for  if  every  one  saw  the  truth  clearly,  we 
should  never  fight  each  other  at  all. 

Turgenev's  subsequent  statement,  that  so  far 
from  Bazarov  being  a  burlesque,  he  was  his  "fa- 
vourite child,"  is  hard  to  understand  even  to-day. 
The  novelist  said  that  with  the  exception  of 
Bazarov's  views  on  art,  he  himself  was  in  agree- 
ment with  practically  all  of  the  ideas  expressed  by 
the  great  iconoclast.  Turgenev  probably  thought 
he  was,  but  really  he  was  not.  Authors  are  poor 
judges  of  their  own  works,  and  their  statements 
about  their  characters  are  seldom  to  be  trusted. 
Many  writers  have  confessed  that  when  they  start 
to  write  a  book,  with  a  clear  notion  in  their  heads 
as  to  how  the  characters  shall  develop,  the  charac- 
ters often  insist  on  developing  quite  otherwise, 
and  guide  the  pen  of  the  author  in  a  manner  that 
constantly  awakens  his  surprise  at  his  own  work. 
Turgenev  surely  intended  originally  that  we  should 
love  Bazarov;  as  a  matter  of  fact,  nobody  really 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

loves  him,1  and  no  other  character  in  the  book  loves 
him  for  long  except  his  parents.  We  have  a  whole- 
some respect  for  him,  as  we  respect  any  ruthless, 
terrible  force;  but  the  word  "love"  does  not  ex- 
press our  feeling  toward  him.  It  is  possible  that 
Turgenev,  who  keenly  realised  the  need  in  Russia 
of  men  of  strong  will,  and  who  always  despised 
himself  because  he  could  not  have  steadily  strong 
convictions,  tried  to  incarnate  in  Bazarov  all  the 
uncompromising  strength  of  character  that  he 
lacked  himself;  just  as  men  who  themselves  lack 
self-assertion  and  cannot  even  look  another  man 
in  the  eye,  secretly  idolise  the  men  of  masterful 
qualities.  It  is  like  the  sick  man  Stevenson  writ- 
ing stories  of  rugged  out-door  activity.  I  heard  a 
student  say  once  that  he  was  sure  Marlowe  was  a 
little,  frail,  weak  man  physically,  and  that  he 
poured  out  all  his  longing  for  virility  and  power 
in  heroes  like  Tamburlaine. 

Bazarov,  as  every  one  knows,  was  drawn  from 
life.  Turgenev  had  once  met  a  Russian  provincial 
doctor,2  whose  straightforward  talk  made  a  pro- 

1 1  cannot  believe  that  even  Mr  Edward  Garnett  loves  him, 
though  in  his  Introduction  to  Constance  Garnett's  translation, 
he  says,  "we  love  him." 

2  It  is  difficult  to  find  out  much  about  the  original  of  Bazarov. 
Haumant  says  Turgenev  met  him  while  travelling  by  the  Rhine 
hi  1860 ;  but  Turgenev  himself  said  that  the  young  doctor  had  died 
not  long  before  1860,  and  that  the  idea  of  the  novel  first  came  to 
him  in  August,  1860,  while  he  was  bathing  on  the  Isle  of  Wight. 

102 


TURGENEV 

found  impression  upon  him.  This  man  died  soon 
after,  and  had  a  glorious  resurrection  in  Bazarov, 
speaking  to  thousands  and  thousands  of  people 
from  his  obscure  and  forgotten  grave.  It  is  rather 
interesting  that  Turgenev,  who  drew  so  many  ir- 
resolute Russian  characters,  should  have  attained 
his  widest  fame  by  the  depiction  of  a  man  who  is 
simply  Incarnate  Will.  If  every  other  person  in 
all  Turgenev's  stories  should  be  forgotten,  it  is  safe 
to  say  that  Bazarov  will  always  dwell  in  the  minds 
of  those  who  have  once  made  his  acquaintance. 

And  yet,  Turgenev,  with  all  his  secret  admiration 
for  the  Frankenstein  he  had  created,  did  not  hesi- 
tate at  the  last  to  crush  him  both  in  soul  and 
body.  The  one  real  conviction  of  Turgenev's  life 
was  pessimism,  —  the  belief  that  the  man  of  the 
noblest  aspiration  and  the  man  of  the  most  brutish 
character  are  treated  by  Nature  with  equal  indiffer- 
ence. Bazarov  is  the  strongest  individual  that  the 
novelist  could  conceive ;  and  it  is  safe  to  say  that 
most  of  us  live  all  our  lives  through  without  meet- 
ing his  equal.  But  his  powerful  mind,  in  its  colossal 
egotism  and  with  its  gigantic  ambitions,  is  an  easy 
prey  to  the  one  thing  he  despised  most  of  all  — 
sentiment ;  and  his  rugged  body  goes  to  the  grave 
through  a  chance  scratch  on  the  ringer.  Thus  the 

Almost  every  writer  on  Russian  literature  has  his  own  set  of  dates 
and  incidents. 

103 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

irony  of  this  book  —  and  I  know  of  no  novel  in  the 
world  that  displays  such  irony  —  is  not  the  irony  of 
intentional  partisan  burlesque.  There  is  no  at- 
tempt in  the  destruction  of  this  proud  character 
to  prove  that  the  "children"  were  wrong  or  mis- 
taken ;  it  is  the  far  deeper  irony  of  life  itself,  show- 
ing the  absolute  insignificance  of  the  ego  in  the  pres- 
ence of  eternal  and  unconscious  nature.  Thus 
Bazarov,  who  seems  intended  for  a  great  hero  of 
tragedy,  is  not  permitted  to  fight  for  his  cause,  nor 
even  to  die  for  it.  He  is  simply  obliterated  by 
chance,  as  an  insect  perishes  under  the  foot  of  a 
passing  traveller,  who  is  entirely  unaware  that  he 
has  taken  an  individual  life. 

Nature  herself  could  hardly  be  colder  or  more  pas- 
sive than  the  woman  with  whom  it  was  Bazarov's 
bad  luck  to  fall  in  love.  The  gradual  change 
wrought  in  his  temperament  by  Madame  Odintsov 
is  shown  in  the  most  subtle  manner.  To  Bazarov, 
women  were  all  alike,  and  valuable  for  only  one 
thing;  he  had  told  this  very  woman  that  people 
were  like  trees  in  a  forest ;  no  botanist  would  think 
of  studying  an  individual  birch  tree.  Why,  then, 
should  this  entirely  unimportant  individual  woman 
change  his  whole  nature,  paralyse  all  his  ambitions, 
ruin  all  the  cheerful  energy  of  his  active  mind? 
He  fights  against  this  obsession  like  a  nervous  pa- 
tient struggling  with  a  dreadful  depression  that 
104 


TURGENEV 

comes  over  him  like  a  flood.  He  fights  like  a 
man  fighting  with  an  enemy  in  the  dark,  whom  he 
cannot  see,  but  whose  terrible  blows  rain  on  his 
face.  When  he  first  meets  her,  he  remarks  to  the 
shocked  Arkady,  "What  a  magnificent  body! 
Shouldn't  I  like  to  see  it  on  the  dissecting  table ! " 
But  he  is  unable  long  to  admire  her  with  such  scien- 
tific aloofness.  "His  blood  was  on  fire  directly 
if  he  merely  thought  of  her;  he  could  easily  have 
mastered  his  blood,  but  something  else  was  taking 
root  in  him,  something  he  had  never  admitted,  at 
which  he  had  always  jeered,  at  which  all  his  pride 
revolted."  It  is  this  bewilderment  at  meeting  the 
two  things  that  are  stronger  than  life  —  love  and 
death  —  that  both  stupefy  and  torture  this  su- 
perman. It  is  the  harsh  amazement  of  one  who, 
believing  himself  to  be  free,  discovers  that  he  is 
really  a  slave.  Just  before  he  dies,  he  murmurs  : 
"You  see  what  a  hideous  spectacle ;  the  worm  half- 
crushed,  but  writhing  still.  And,  you  see  I  thought 
too :  I'd  break  down  so  many  things,  I  wouldn't 
die,  why  should  I !  there  were  problems  to  solve, 
and  I  was  a  giant !  And  now  all  the  problem  for  the 
giant  is  how  to  die  decently,  though  that  makes  no 
difference  to  any  one  either.  ...  I  was  needed  by 
Russia.  .  .  .  No,  it's  clear,  I  wasn't  needed." 

Madame   Odintsov's   profound   and    subtle   re- 
mark about  happiness  is  the  key  to  her  character, 
105 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

and  shows  why  she  never  could  have  been  happy 
with  Bazarov,  or  have  given  him  any  happiness. 

"We  were  talking  of  happiness,  I  believe.  .  .  . 
Tell  me  why  it  is  that  even  when  we  are  enjoying 
music,  for  instance,  or  a  fine  evening,  or  a  conver- 
sation with  sympathetic  people,  it  all  seems  an  in- 
timation of  some  measureless  happiness  existing 
apart  somewhere  rather  than  actual  happiness  such, 
I  mean,  as  we  ourselves  are  in  possession  of  ?  Why 
is  it  ?  Or  perhaps  you  have  no  feeling  like  that  ?  " 

Many  of  us  certainly  have  feelings  like  that ;  but 
while  these  two  intellectuals  are  endeavouring  to 
analyse  happiness,  and  losing  it  in  the  process  of 
analysis,  the  two  young  lovers,  Arkady  and  Katya, 
whose  brows  are  never  furrowed  by  cerebration, 
are  finding  happiness  in  the  familiar  human  way. 
In  answer  to  his  declaration  of  love,  she  smiled  at 
him  through  her  tears.  "No  one  who  has  not  seen 
those  tears  in  the  eyes  of  the  beloved,  knows  yet 
to  what  a  point,  faint  with  shame  and  gratitude,  a 
man  may  be  happy  on  earth." 

Although  the  character  of  Bazarov  dominates  the 
whole  novel,  Turgenev  has,  I  think,  displayed 
genius  of  a  still  higher  order  in  the  creation  of  that 
simple-minded  pair  of  peasants,  the  father  and 
mother  of  the  young  nihilist.  These  two  are  old- 
fashioned,  absolutely  pious,  dwelling  in  a  mental 
world  millions  of  miles  removed  from  that  of  their 
106 


TURGENEV 

son ;  they  have  not  even  a  remote  idea  of  what  is 
passing  in  his  mind,  but  they  look  on  him  with 
adoration,  and  believe  him  to  be  the  greatest  man 
in  all  Russia.  At  the  end  of  a  wonderful  sketch  of 
the  mother,  Turgenev  says:  "Such  women  are  not 
common  nowadays.  God  knows  whether  we  ought 
to  rejoice  ! " 

This  humble  pair,  whom  another  novelist  might 
have  treated  with  scorn,  are  glorified  here  by  their 
infinite  love  for  their  son.  Such  love  as  that  seems 
indeed  too  great  for  earth,  too  great  for  time,  and 
to  belong  only  to  eternity.  The  unutterable  pathos 
of  this  love  consists  in  the  fact  that  it  is  made  up  so 
largely  of  fear.  They  fear  their  son  as  only  igno- 
rant parents  can  fear  their  educated  offspring;  it 
is  something  that  I  have  seen  often,  that  every  one 
must  have  observed,  that  arouses  the  most  poignant 
sympathy  in  those  that  understand  it.  It  is  the  fear 
that  the  boy  will  be  bored  at  home ;  that  he  is  long- 
ing for  more  congenial  companionship  elsewhere; 
that  the  very  solicitude  of  his  parents  for  his  health, 
for  his  physical  comfort,  will  irritate  and  annoy 
rather  than  please  him.  There  is  no  heart-hunger 
on  earth  so  cruel  and  so  terrible  as  the  hunger  of 
father  and  mother  for  the  complete  sympathy  and 
affection  of  their  growing  children.  This  is  why 
the  pride  of  so  many  parents  in  the  development 
of  their  children  is  mingled  with  such  mute  but 
107 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

piercing  terror.  It  is  the  fear  that  the  son  will  grow 
away  from  them;  that  their  caresses  will  deaden 
rather  than  quicken  his  love  for  them.  They  watch 
him  as  one  watches  some  infinitely  precious  thing 
that  may  at  any  moment  disappear  forever.  The 
fear  of  a  mother  toward  the  son  she  loves  is  among 
the  deepest  tragedies  of  earth.  She  knows  he  is 
necessary  to  her  happiness,  and  that  she  is  not  to 
his. 

Even  the  cold-hearted  Bazarov  is  shaken  by  the 
joy  of  his  mother's  greeting  when  he  returns  home, 
and  by  her  agony  at  his  early  departure.  He  hates 
himself  for  not  being  able  to  respond  to  her  demon- 
strations of  affection.  Unlike  most  sons,  he  is 
clever  enough  to  understand  the  slavish  adoration 
of  his  parents ;  but  he  realises  that  he  cannot,  es- 
pecially in  the  presence  of  his  college  friend,  relieve 
their  starving  hearts.  At  the  very  end,  he  says  : 
"My  father  will  tell  you  what  a  man  Russia  is 
losing.  .  .  .  That's  nonsense,  but  don't  contradict 
the  old  man.  Whatever  toy  will  comfort  the  child 
.  .  .  you  know.  And  be  kind  to  mother.  People 
like  them  aren't  to  be  found  in  your  great  world  if 
you  look  by  daylight  with  a  candle." 

The  bewildered,  helpless  anguish  of  the  parents, 

who  cannot  understand  why  the  God  they  worship 

takes  their  son  away  from  them,  reaches  the  greatest 

climax  of  tragedy  that  I  know  of  anywhere  in  the 

108 


TURGENEV 

whole  history  of  fiction.  Not  even  the  figure  of 
Lear  holding  the  dead  body  of  Cordelia  surpasses 
in  tragic  intensity  this  old  pair  whose  whole  life  has 
for  so  long  revolved  about  their  son.  And  the 
novel  closes  with  the  scene  in  the  little  village 
churchyard,  where  the  aged  couple,  supporting  each 
other,  visit  the  tomb,  and  wipe  away  the  dust  from 
the  stone.  Even  the  abiding  pessimism  of  the  novel- 
ist lifts  for  a  monrent  its  heavy  gloom  at  this 
spectacle.  "Can  it  be  that  their  prayers,  their 
tears,  are  fruitless?  Can  it  be  that  love,  sacred, 
devoted  love,  is  not  all-powerful  ?  Oh,  no  !  How- 
ever passionate,  sinning,  and  rebellious  the  heart 
hidden  in  the  tomb,  the  flowers  growing  over  it  peep 
serenely  at  us  with  their  innocent  eyes ;  they  tell  us 
not  of  eternal  peace  alone,  of  that  great  peace  of  in- 
different nature ;  they  tell  us  too  of  eternal  recon- 
ciliation and  of  life  without  end." 

This  is  where  the  novel  Fathers  and  Children  rises 
above  a  picture  of  Russian  politics  in  the  sixties, 
and  remains  forever  an  immortal  work  of  art.  For 
the  greatness  of  this  book  lies  not  in  the  use  of  the 
word  Nihilist,  nor  in  the  reproduction  of  ephemeral 
political  movements ;  its  greatness  consists  in  the 
fact  that  it  faithfully  portrays  not  merely  the 
Russian  character,  nor  the  nineteenth  century,  but 
the  very  depths  of  the  human  heart  as  it  has  mani- 
fested itself  in  all  ages  and  among  all  nations. 
109 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

The  next  novel,  Smoke,  despite  its  extraordinary 
brilliancy,  is  in  many  ways  unworthy  of  Tur- 
genev's  genius.  It  was  written  at  Baden,  while 
he  was  living  with  the  Viardots,  and  I  suspect 
that  the  influence  of  Madame  Viardot  is  stronger  in 
this  work  than  in  anything  else  Turgenev  produced. 
Of  course  he  had  discussed  again  and  again  with 
her  the  abuse  that  young  Russia  had  poured  on  his 
head  for  Fathers  and  Children;  and  I  suspect  she 
incited  him  to  strike  and  spare  not.  The  smoke  in 
this  novel  is  meant  to  represent  the  idle  vapour  of 
Russian  political  jargon ;  all  the  heated  discussions 
on  both  sides  are  smoke,  purposeless,  obscure,  and 
transitory  as  a  cloud.  But  the  smoke  really  rose 
from  the  flames  of  anger  in  his  own  heart,  fanned  by 
a  woman's  breath,  who  delighted  to  see  her  mild 
giant  for  once  smite  his  enemies  with  all  his  force. 
If  Fathers  and  Children  had  been  received  in  Russia 
with  more  intelligence  or  more  sympathy,  it  is  cer- 
tain that  Smoke  would  never  have  appeared.  This  is 
the  most  bitter  and  purely  satirical  of  all  the  works 
of  Turgenev ;  the  Slavophils,  with  their  ignorance  of 
the  real  culture  of  western  Europe,  and  their  un- 
willingness to  learn  from  good  teachers,  are  hit  hard ; 
but  still  harder  hit  are  the  Petersburg  aristocrats, 
the  "idle  rich"  (legitimate  conventional  target  for 
all  novelists),  who  are  here  represented  as  little 
better  in  intelligence  than  grinning  apes,  and  much 


TURGENEV 

worse  in  morals.  No  one  ever  seems  to  love  his 
compatriots  when  he  observes  them  in  foreign  lands ; 
if  Americans  complain  that  Henry  James  has  sat- 
irised them  in  his  international  novels,  they  ought 
to  read  Smoke,  and  see  how  Turgenev  has  treated 
his  travelling  countrymen.  They  talk  bad  German, 
hum  airs  out  of  tune,  insist  on  speaking  French  in- 
stead of  their  own  tongue,  attract  everybody's  at- 
tention at  restaurants  and  railway-stations,  —  in 
short,  behave  exactly  as  each  American  insists  other 
Americans  behave  in  Europe. 

The  book  is  rilled  with  little  portraits,  made 
"perad venture  with  a  pen  corroded."  First  comes 
the  typical  Russian  gasbag,  who  talks  and  then 
talks  some  more. 

"He  was  no  longer  young,  he  had  a  flabby  nose 
and  soft  cheeks,  that  looked  as  if  they  had  been 
boiled,  dishevelled  greasy  locks,  and  a  fat  squat 
person.  Everlastingly  short  of  cash,  and  ever- 
lastingly hi  raptures  over  something,  Rostislav 
Bambaev  wandered,  aimless  but  exclamatory,  over 
the  face  of  our  long-suffering  mother-earth." 

Dostoevski  was  so  angry  when  he  read  this  book 
that  he  said  it  ought  to  be  burnt  by  the  common 
hangman.  But  he  must  have  approved  of  the 
picture  of  the  Petersburg  group,  who  under  a  thin 
veneer  of  polished  manners  are  utterly  inane  and 
cynically  vicious.  One  of  them  had  "an  expres- 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

sion  of  constant  irritability  on  his  face,  as  though  he 
could  not  forgive  himself  for  his  own  appearance." 

The  portrait  of  the  Pecksniffian  Pishtchalkin : 
"  In  exterior,  too,  he  had  begun  to  resemble  a  sage 
of  antiquity;  his  hair  had  fallen  off  the  crown  of 
his  head,  and  his  full  face  had  completely  set  in 
a  sort  of  solemn  jelly  of  positively  blatant  virtue." 

None  but  a  great  master  could  have  drawn  such 
pictures ;  but  it  is  not  certain  that  the  master  was 
employing  his  skill  to  good  advantage.  And  while 
representing  his  hatred  of  all  the  Russian  bores 
who  had  made  his  life  weary,  he  selected  an  old, 
ruined  man,  Potugin,  to  express  his  own  sentiments 
—  disgust  with  the  present  condition  of  Russia, 
and  admiration  for  the  culture  of  Europe  and  the 
practical  inventive  power  of  America.  Potugin 
says  that  he  had  just  visited  the  exposition  at  the 
Crystal  Palace  in  London,  and  that  he  reflected 
that  "our  dear  mother,  Holy  Russia,  could  go  and 
hide  herself  in  the  lower  regions,  without  dis- 
arranging a  single  nail  in  the  place."  Not  a  single 
thing  in  the  whole  vast  exhibition  had  been  in- 
vented by  a  Russian.  Even  the  Sandwich  Islanders 
had  contributed  something  to  the  show.  At  an- 
other place  in  the  story  he  declares  that  his  father 
bought  a  Russian  threshing  machine,  which  re- 
mained five  years  useless  in  the  barn,  until  re- 
placed by  an  American  one. 


TURGENEV 

Such  remarks  enraged  the  Slavophils  beyond 
measure,  for  they  were  determined  to  keep  out 
of  Russia  foreign  inventions  and  foreign  ideas. 
But  that  Turgenev  was  right  is  shown  in  the 
twentieth  century  by  an  acute  German  observer, 
Baron  Von  der  Briiggen.  In  his  interesting  book, 
Russia  of  To-day,  he  says  :  "All  civilisation  is 
derived  from  the  West.  .  .  .  People  are  now 
beginning  to  understand  this  in  Russia  after  having 
lost  considerable  time  with  futile  phantasies  upon 
original  Slavonic  civilisation.  If  Russia  wishes 
to  progress,  her  Western  doors  must  be  opened 
wide  in  order  to  facilitate  the  influx  of  European 
culture."  The  author  of  these  words  was  not 
thinking  of  Turgenev :  but  his  language  is  a  faith- 
ful echo  of  Potugin.  They  sound  like  a  part  of  his 
discourse.  Still,  the  literary  value  of  Smoke  does 
not  lie  in  the  fact  that  Turgenev  was  a  true  prophet, 
or  that  he  successfully  attacked  those  who  had 
attacked  him.  If  this  were  all  that  the  book  con- 
tained, it  would  certainly  rank  low  as  a  work  of  art. 

But  this  is  not  all.  Turgenev  has  taken  for  his 
hero  Litvinov,  a  young  Russian,  thoroughly  com- 
monplace, but  thoroughly  practical  and  sincere, 
the  type  of  man  whom  Russia  needed  the  most, 
and  has  placed  him  between  two  women,  who  rep- 
resent the  eternal  contrast  between  sacred  and 
profane  love.  This  situation  has  all  the  elements 
i  113 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

of  true  drama,  as  every  one  knows  who  has  read 
or  heard  Carmen;  it  is  needless  to  say  that  Tur- 
genev  has  developed  it  with  consummate  skill. 
Turgenev  regarded  brilliantly  wicked  women  with 
hatred  and  loathing,  but  also  with  a  kind  of  terror ; 
and  he  has  never  failed  to  make  them  sinister  and 
terrible.  Irina  as  a  young  girl  nearly  ruined  the 
life  of  Litvinov;  and  now  we  find  him  at  Baden, 
his  former  passion  apparently  conquered,  and  he 
himself  engaged  to  Turgenev's  ideal  woman,  Tanya, 
not  clever,  but  modest,  sensible,  and  true-hearted, 
another  Lisa.  The  contrast  between  these  two 
women,  who  instinctively  understand  each  other 
immediately  and  the  struggle  of  each  for  the  soul 
of  the  hero,  shows  Turgenev  at  his  best.  It  is  re- 
markable, too,  how  clearly  the  reader  sees  the  heart 
of  the  man,  so  obscure  to  himself ;  and  how  evident 
it  is  that  in  the  very  midst  of  his  passion  for  Irina, 
his  love  for  Tanya  remains.  Irina  is  a  firework, 
Tanya  a  star;  and  even  the  biggest  skyrockets, 
that  illuminate  all  the  firmament,  do  not  for  long 
conceal  the  stars. 

Turgenev  thoroughly  relieved  his  mind  in  Smoke; 
and  in  the  novel  that  followed  it,  Torrents  of  Spring, 
he  omitted  politics  and  "movements"  altogether, 
and  confined  himself  to  human  nature  in  its  eternal 
aspect.  For  this  very  reason  the  book  attracted 
little  attention  in  Russia,  and  is  usually  dismissed 
114 


TURGENEV 

in  one  sentence  by  the  critics.  But  it  is  a  work  of 
great  power;  it  sings  the  requiem  of  lost  youth, 
a  minor  melody  often  played  by  Turgenev  ;  it  gives 
us  a  curious  picture  of  an  Italian  family  living  in 
Germany,  and  it  contains  the  portrait  of  an  ab- 
solutely devilish  but  unforgettable  woman.  We 
have  a  sincere  and  highly  interesting  analysis  of 
the  Russian,  the  German,  and  the  Italian  tem- 
perament; not  shown  in  their  respective  political 
prejudices,  but  in  the  very  heart  of  their  emotional 
life.  Once  more  the  Russian  hero  is  placed  between 
God  and  Satan ;  and  this  time  Satan  conquers. 
Love,  however,  survives  the  burnt-out  fires  of 
passion;  but  it  survives  only  as  a  vain  regret  — 
it  survives  as  youth  survives,  only  as  an  unspeak- 
ably precious  memory.  .  .  .  The  three  most 
sinister  women  that  Turgenev  has  ever  drawn  are 
Varvara  Pavlovna,  in  A  House  of  Gentlefolk;  Irina, 
in  Smoke;  and  Maria  Nikolaevna,  in  Torrents  of 
Spring.  All  three  are  wealthy  and  love  luxury; 
all  three  are  professional  wreckers  of  the  lives  of 
men.  The  evil  that  they  do  rises  from  absolute 
selfishness,  rather  than  from  deliberate  sensuality. 
Not  one  of  them  could  have  been  saved  by  any 
environment,  or  by  any  husband.  Varvara  is 
frivolous,  Irina  is  cold-hearted,  and  Maria  is  a 
super- woman ;  she  makes  a  bet  with  her  husband 
that  she  can  seduce  any  man  he  brings  to  the  house. 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

To  each  of  her  lovers  she  gives  an  iron  ring,  symbol 
of  their  slavery;  and  like  Circe,  she  transforms 
men  into  swine.  After  she  has  hypnotised  Sanin, 
and  taken  away  his  allegiance  to  the  pure  girl 
whom  he  loves,  "  her  eyes,  wide  and  clear,  almost 
white,  expressed  nothing  but  the  ruthlessness 
and  glutted  joy  of  conquest.  The  hawk,  as  it 
clutches  a  captured  bird,  has  eyes  like  that." 
Turgenev,  whose  ideal  woman  is  all  gentleness, 
modesty,  and  calmness,  must  have  seen  many 
thoroughly  corrupt  ones,  to  have  been  so  deeply 
impressed  with  a  woman's  capacity  for  evil.  In 
Virgin  Soil,  when  he  introduces  Mashurina  to  the 
reader,  he  says:  "She  was  a  single  woman  .  .  . 
and  a  very  chaste  single  woman.  Nothing  wonder- 
ful in  that,  some  sceptic  will  say,  remembering 
what  has  been  said  of  her  exterior.  Something 
wonderful  and  rare,  let  us  be  permitted  to  say." 
It  is  significant  that  in  not  one  of  Turgenev's  seven 
novels  is  the  villain  of  the  story  a  man.  Women 
simply  must  play  the  leading  role  in  his  books,  for 
to  them  he  has  given  the  power  of  will ;  they  lead 
men  upward,  or  they  drag  them  downward,  but 
they  are  always  in  front. 

The    virtuous    heroine    of    Torrents   of  Spring, 

Gemma,  is  unlike  any  other  girl  that  Turgenev 

has  created.     In  fact,  all  of  his  good  women  are 

individualised  —  the  closest  similarity  is  perhaps 

116 


TURGENEV 

seen  in  Lisa  and  Tanya,  but  even  there  the  image 
of  each  girl  is  absolutely  distinct  in  the  reader's 
mind.  But  Gemma  falls  into  no  group,  nor  is 
there  any  other  woman  in  Turgenev  with  whom 
one  instinctively  classifies  or  compares  her.  Per- 
haps this  is  because  she  is  Italian.  It  is  a  long 
time  before  the  reader  can  make  up  his  mind 
whether  he  likes  her  or  not  —  a  rare  thing  in  Tur- 
genev, for  most  of  his  good  women  capture  us  in 
five  minutes.  Indeed,  one  does  not  know  for  some 
chapters  whether  Gemma  is  sincere  or  not,  and  one 
is  angry  with  Sanin  for  his  moth-like  flitting  about 
her  radiance.  She  at  once  puzzles  and  charms 
the  reader,  as  she  did  the  young  Russian.  Her 
family  circle  are  sketched  with  extraordinary 
skill,  and  her  young  brother  is  unique  in  Turgenev's 
books.  He  has,  as  a  rule,  not  paid  much  atten- 
tion to  growing  boys;  but  the  sympathy  and 
tenderness  shown  in  the  depiction  of  this  impulsive, 
affectionate,  chivalrous,  clean-hearted  boy  prove 
that  the  novelist's  powers  of  analysis  were  equal 
to  every  phase  of  human  nature.  No  complete 
estimate  of  Turgenev  can  be  made  without  read- 
ing Torrents  of  Spring;  for  the  Italian  menage, 
the  character  of  Gemma  and  her  young  brother, 
and  the  absurd  duelling  punctilio  are  not  to  be 
found  elsewhere.  And  Maria  is  the  very  Principle 
of  Evil ;  one  feels  that  if  Satan  had  spoken  to  her 
117 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

in  the  Garden  of  Eden,  she  could  easily  have 
tempted  him;  at  all  events,  he  wouki  not  have 
been  tha  most  subtle  beast  in  the  field. 

In  1876  Turgenev  wrote  Virgin  Soil.  Of  the 
seven  novels,  this  is  the  last,  the  longest,  and  the 
least.  But  it  did  not  deserve  then,  and  does  not 
deserve  now,  the  merciless  condemnation  of  the 
critics ;  though  they  still  take  up  stones  to  stone  it. 
Never  was  a  book  about  a  revolutionary  move- 
ment, written  by  one  in  sympathy  with  it,  so 
lukewarm.  Naturally  the  public  could  not  swallow 
it,  for  even  God  cannot  digest  a  Laodicean.  But 
the  lukewarmness  in  this  instance  arose,  not  from 
lack  of  conviction,  but  rather  from  the  conviction 
that  things  can  really  happen  only  in  the  fulness 
of  time.  Everything  in  the  story  from  first  to  last 
emphasises  this  fact  and  might  be  considered  a 
discourse  on  the  text  add  to  knowledge,  temperance: 
and  to  temperance,  patience.  But  these  virtues 
have  never  been  in  high  favour  with  revolutionists, 
which  explains  why  so  many  revolutions  are  abor- 
tive, and  so  many  ephemeral.  It  is  commonly 
said  that  the  leading  character  in  Virgin  Soil, 
Solomin,  is  a  failure  because  he  is  not  exactly  true 
to  life,  he  is  not  typically  Russian.  That  criticism 
seems  to  me  to  miss  the  main  point  of  the  work. 
Of  course  he  is  not  true  to  life,  of  course  he  is  not 
typically  Russian.  The  typical  Russian  in  the 
118 


TURGENEV 

book  is  Nezhdanov,  who  is  entirely  true  to  life  in 
his  uncertainty  and  in  his  futility;  he  does  not 
know  whether  or  not  he  is  in  love,  and  he  does  not 
know  at  the  last  what  the  "cause"  really  is.  He 
fails  to  understand  the  woman  who  accompanies 
him,  he  fails  to  understand  Solomin,  and  he  fails 
to  understand  himself.  So  he  finally  does  what  so 
many  Russian  dreamers  have  done  —  he  places 
against  his  own  breast  the  pistol  he  had  intended 
for  a  less  dangerous  enemy.  But  he  is  a  dead  man 
long  before  that.  In  sharp  contrast  with  him, 
Turgenev  has  created  the  character  Solomin,  who 
is  not  at  all  "typically  Russian,"  but  who  must  be 
if  the  revolutionary  cause  is  to  triumph.  He 
seems  unreal  because  he  is  unreal;  he  is  the  ideal. 
He  is  the  man  of  practical  worth,  the  man  who  is 
not  passion's  slave,  and  Turgenev  loved  him  for 
the  same  reason  that  Hamlet  loved  Horatio. 
Amid  all  the  vain  babble  of  the  other  characters, 
Solomin  stands  out  salient,  the  man  who  will 
eventually  save  Russia  without  knowing  it.  His 
power  of  will  is  in  inverse  proportion  to  his  fluency 
of  speech.  The  typical  Russian,  as  portrayed  by 
Turgenev,  says  much,  and  does  little ;  Solomin 
lives  a  life  of  cheerful,  reticent  activity.  As  the 
revolution  is  not  at  hand,  the  best  thing  to  do  in 
the  interim  is  to  accomplish  something  useful. 
He  has  learned  how  to  labour  and  to  wait.  "This 
119 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

calm,  heavy,  not  to  say  clumsy  man  was  not  only 
incapable  of  lying  or  bragging;  one  might  rely  on 
him,  like  a  stone  wall."  In  every  scene,  whether 
among  the  affected  aristocrats  or  among  the  futile 
revolutionists,  Solomin  appears  to  advantage. 
There  is  no  worse  indictment  of  human  intelligence 
than  the  great  compliment  we  pay  certain  persons 
when  we  call  them  sane.  Solomin  is  sane,  and 
seems  therefore  untrue  to  life. 

It  is  seldom  that  Turgenev  reminds  us  of  Dickens ; 
but  Sipyagin  and  his  wife  might  belong  to  the  great 
Dickens  gallery,  though  drawn  with  a  restraint 
unknown  to  the  Englishman.  Sipyagin  himself 
is  a  miniature  Pecksniff,  unctuous,  polished,  and 
hollow.  The  dinner-table  scenes  at  his  house  are 
pictured  with  a  subdued  but  implacable  irony. 
How  the  natural-born  aristocrat  Turgenev  hated 
the  Russian  aristocracy !  When  Solomin  appears 
in  this  household,  he  seems  like  a  giant  among 
manikins,  so  truly  do  the  simple  human  virtues 
tower  above  the  arrogance  of  affectation.  The 
woman  Marianna  is  a  sister  of  Elena,  whom  we 
learned  to  know  in  On  the  Eve;  she  has  the  purity, 
not  of  an  angel,  but  of  a  noble  woman.  She  has 
that  quiet,  steadfast  resolution  so  characteristic 
of  Russian  heroines.  As  for  Mariusha,  she  is  a 
specimen  of  Turgenev's  extraordinary  power  of 
characterisation.  She  appears  only  two  or  three 


TURGENEV 

times  in  the  entire  novel,  and  remains  one  of  its 
most  vivid  personages.  This  is  ever  the  final 
mystery  of  Turgenev's  art  —  the  power  of  ab- 
solutely complete  representation  in  a  few  hundred 
words.  In  economy  of  material  there  has  never 
been  his  equal. 

The  whole  novel  is  worth  reading,  apart  from  its 
revolutionary  interest,  apart  from  the  proclamation 
of  the  Gospel  according  to  Solomin,  for  the  picture 
of  that  anachronistic  pair  of  old  lovers,  Fomushka 
and  Finushka.1  "There  are  ponds  in  the  steppes 
which  never  get  putrid,  though  there's  no  stream 
through  them,  because  they  are  fed  by  springs 
from  the  bottom.  And  my  old  dears  have  such 
springs  too  in  the  bottom  of  their  hearts,  and  pure 
as  can  be."  Only  one  short  chapter  is  devoted  to 
this  aged  couple,  at  whom  we  smile  but  never  laugh. 
At  first  sight  they  may  seem  to  be  an  unimportant 
episode  in  the  story,  and  a  blemish  on  its  constructive 
lines;  but  a  little  reflection  reveals  not  only  the 
humorous  tenderness  that  inspired  the  novelist's 
pen  in  their  creation,  but  contrasts  them  in  their 
absurd  indifference  to  time,  with  the  turbulent 
and  meaningless  whirlpool  where  the  modern  rev- 
olutionists revolve.  For  just  as  tranquillity  may 
not  signify  stagnation,  so  revolution  is  not  neces- 

1 1  cannot  doubt  that  Turgenev  got  the  hint  for  this  chapter 
from  Gogol's  tale,  Old-fashioned  Farmers. 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

sarily  progression.  This  old-fashioned  pair  have 
learned  nothing  from  nineteenth  century  thought, 
least  of  all  its  unrest.  They  have,  however,  in 
their  own  lives  attained  the  positive  end  of  all 
progress  —  happiness.  They  are  indeed  a  symbol 
of  eternal  peace,  the  shadow  of  a  great  rock  in 
a  weary  land.  Turgenev,  most  cultivated  of 
novelists,  never  fails  to  rank  simplicity  of  heart 
above  the  accomplishments  of  the  mind. 

Turgenev's  splendid  education,  his  wealth  which 
made  him  independent,  his  protracted  residence 
in  Russia,  in  Germany,  and  in  Paris,  his  intimate 
knowledge  of  various  languages,  and  his  bachelor 
life  gave  to  his  innate  genius  the  most  perfect 
equipment  that  perhaps  any  author  has  ever  en- 
joyed. Here  was  a  man  entirely  without  the 
ordinary  restraints  and  prejudices,  whose  mind  was 
always  hospitable  to  new  ideas,  who  knew  life  at 
first  hand,  and  to  whose  width  of  experience  was 
united  the  unusual  faculty  of  accurately  minute 
observation.  He  knew  people  much  better  than 
they  knew  themselves.  He  was  at  various  times 
claimed  and  hated  by  all  parties,  and  belonged  to 
none.  His  mind  was  too  spacious  to  be  dominated 
by  one  idea.  When  we  reflect  that  he  had  at  his 
command  the  finest  medium  of  expression  that  the 
world  has  ever  possessed,  and  that  his  skill  in  the 
use  of  it  has  never  been  equalled  by  a  single  one 


TURGENEV 

of  his  countrymen,  it  is  not  surprising  that  his 
novels  approach  perfection. 

His  own  standpoint  was  that  of  the  Artist,  and 
each  man  must  be  judged  by  his  main  purpose. 
Here  is  where  he  differs  most  sharply  from  Tolstoi, 
Dostoevski,  and  Andreev,  and  explains  why  the 
Russians  admire  him  more  than  they  love  him. 
To  him  the  truth  about  life  was  always  the  main 
thing.  His  novels  were  never  tracts,  he  wrote 
them  with  the  most  painstaking  care,  and  in  his 
whole  career  he  never  produced  a  pot-boiler.  His 
work  is  invariably  marked  by  that  high  seriousness 
which  Arnold  worshipped,  and  love  of  his  art  was 
his  main  inspiration.  He  had  a  gift  for  condensa- 
tion, and  a  willingness  to  cultivate  it,  such  as  no 
other  novelist  has  shown.  It  is  safe  to  say  that 
his  novels  tell  more  about  human  nature  in  less 
space  than  any  other  novels  in  the  world.  Small 
as  they  are,  they  are  inexhaustible,  and  always 
reveal  beauty  unsuspected  on  the  previous  reading. 

His  stories  are  not  stories  of  incident,  but  stories 
of  character.  The  extraordinary  interest  that  they 
arouse  is  confined  almost  entirely  to  our  interest 
in  his  men  and  women;  the  plot,  the  narrative, 
the  events  are  always  secondary;  he  imitated  no 
other  novelist,  and  no  other  can  imitate  him. 
For  this  very  reason,  he  can  never  enjoy  the  popu- 
larity of  Scott  or  Dumas ;  he  will  always  be  caviare 
123 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

to  the  general.  Henry  James  said  of  him,  that 
he  was  particularly  a  favourite  with  people  of 
cultivated  taste,  and  that  nothing  cultivates  the 
taste  better  than  reading  him.  It  is  a  surprising 
proof  of  the  large  number  of  readers  who  have 
good  taste,  that  his  novels  met  with  instant  acclaim, 
and  that  he  enjoyed  an  enormous  reputation  during 
his  whole  career.  After  the  publication  of  his 
first  book,  A  Sportsman's  Sketches,  he  was  generally 
regarded  in  Russia  as  her  foremost  writer,  a  posi- 
tion maintained  until  his  death ;  his  novels  were 
translated  into  French  and  English  very  soon  after 
their  appearance,  and  a  few  days  after  his  death, 
the  London  Athenaum  remarked,  "Europe  has 
been  unanimous  in  according  to  Turgenev  the  first 
rank  in  contemporary  literature."  That  a  man 
whose  books  never  on  any  page  show  a  single  touch 
of  melodrama  should  have  reached  the  hearts  of 
so  many  readers,  proves  how  interesting  is  the  truth- 
ful portrayal  of  human  nature. 

George  Brandes  has  well  said  that  the  relation 
of  Turgenev  to  his  own  characters  is  in  general 
the  same  relation  to  them  held  by  the  reader. 
This  may  not  be  the  secret  of  his  power,  but  it  is 
a  partial  explanation  of  it.  Brandes  shows  that 
not  even  men  of  genius  have  invariably  succeeded 
in  making  the  reader  take  their  own  attitude  to 
the  characters  they  have  created.  Thus,  we  are 
124 


TURGENEV 

often  bored  by  persons  that  Balzac  intended  to 
be  tremendously  interesting ;  and  we  often  laugh 
at  persons  that  Dickens  intended  to  draw  our  tears. 
With  the  single  exception  of  Bazarov,  no  such  mis- 
take is  possible  in  Turgenev's  work ;  and  the  mis- 
understanding in  that  case  was  caused  principally 
by  the  fact  that  Bazarov,  with  all  his  powerful 
individuality,  stood  for  a  political  principle.  Tur- 
genev's characters  are  never  vague,  shadowy,  or 
indistinct;  they  are  always  portraits,  with  every 
detail  so  subtly  added,  that  each  one  becomes  like 
a  familiar  acquaintance  in  real  life.  Perhaps  his 
one  fault  lay  in  his  fondness  for  dropping  the  story 
midway,  and  going  back  over  the  previous  existence 
or  career  of  a  certain  personage.  This  is  the  only 
notable  blemish  on  his  art.  But  even  by  this 
method,  which  would  be  exceedingly  irritating  in 
a  writer  of  less  skill,  additional  interest  in  the 
character  is  aroused.  It  is  as  though  Turgenev 
personally  introduced  his  men  and  women  to  the 
reader,  accompanying  each  introduction  with  some 
biographical  remarks  that  let  us  know  why  the  in- 
troduction was  made,  and  stir  our  curiosity  to 
hear  what  the  character  will  say.  Then  these 
introductions  are  themselves  so  wonderfully  vivid, 
are  given  with  such  brilliancy  of  outline,  that  they 
are  little  works  of  art  in  themselves,  like  the  match- 
less pen  portraits  of  Carlyle. 
125 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

Another  reason  why  Turgenev's  characters  are 
so  interesting,  is  because  in  each  case  he  has  given 
a  remarkable  combination  of  individual  and  type. 
Here  is  where  he  completely  overshadows  Suder- 
mann,  even  Ibsen,  for  their  most  successful  per- 
sonages are  abnormal.  Panshin,  for  example, 
is  a  familiar  type  in  any  Continental  city;  he  is 
merely  the  representative  of  the  young  society  man. 
He  is  accomplished,  sings  fairly  well,  sketches  a 
little,  rides  horseback  finely,  is  a  ready  conver- 
sationalist; while  underneath  all  these  superficial 
adornments  he  is  shallow  and  vulgar.  Ordinary 
acquaintances  might  not  suspect  his  inherent 
vulgarity  —  all  Lisa  knows  is  that  she  does  not  like 
him;  but  the  experienced  woman  of  the  world, 
the  wife  of  Lavretsky,  understands  him  instantly, 
and  has  not  the  slightest  difficulty  in  bringing  his 
vulgarity  to  the  surface.  Familiar  type  as  he  is,  — 
there  are  thousands  of  his  ilk  in  all  great  centres 
of  civilisation,  —  Panshin  is  individual,  and  we 
hate  him  as  though  he  had  shadowed  our  own  lives. 
Again,  Varvara  herself  is  the  type  of  society  woman 
whom  Turgenev  knew  well,  and  whom  he  both 
hated  and  feared ;  yet  she  is  as  distinct  an  individ- 
ual as  any  that  he  has  given  us.  He  did  not 
scruple  to  create  abnormal  figures  when  he  chose; 
it  is  certainly  to  be  hoped  that  Maria,  in  Torrents 
of  Spring,  is  abnormal  even  among  her  class ;  but 
126 


TURGENEV 

she  is  an  engine  of  sin  rather  than  a  real  woman, 
and  is  not  nearly  so  convincingly  drawn  as  the 
simple  old  mother  of  Bazarov. 

Turgenev  represents  realism  at  its  best,  because 
he  deals  with  souls  rather  than  with  bodies.  It 
is  in  this  respect  that  his  enormous  superiority  over 
Zola  is  most  clearly  shown.  When  L'Assommoir 
was  published,  George  Moore  asked  Turgenev 
how  he  liked  it,  and  he  replied  :  "What  difference 
does  it  make  to  me  whether  a  woman  sweats  in  the 
middle  of  her  back  or  under  her  arm  ?  I  want  to 
know  how  she  thinks,  not  how  she  feels."  In 
that  concrete  illustration,  Turgenev  diagnosed  the 
weakness  of  naturalism.  No  one  has  ever  analysed 
the  passion  of  love  more  successfully  than  he; 
but  he  is  interested  in  the  growth  of  love  in  the 
mind,  rather  than  in  its  carnal  manifestations. 

Finally,  Turgenev,  although  an  uncompromising 
realist,  was  at  heart  always  a  poet.  In  reading 
him  we  feel  that  what  he  says  is  true,  it  is  life  indeed ; 
but  we  also  feel  an  inexpressible  charm.  It  is  the 
mysterious  charm  of  music,  that  makes  our  hearts 
swell  and  our  eyes  swim.  He  saw  life,  as  every 
one  must  see  it,  through  the  medium  of  his  own 
soul.  As  Joseph  Conrad  has  said,  no  novelist 
describes  the  world;  he  simply  describes  his  own 
world.  Turgenev  had  the  temperament  of  a  post, 
just  the  opposite  temperament  from  such  men  of 
127 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

genius  as  Flaubert  and  Guy  de  Maupassant. 
Their  books  receive  our  mental  homage,  and  de- 
serve it ;  but  they  are  without  charm.  On  closing 
their  novels,  we  never  feel  that  wonderful  after- 
glow that  lingers  after  the  reading  of  Turgenev. 
To  read  him  is  not  only  to  be  mentally  stimulated, 
it  is  to  be  purified  and  ennobled;  for  though  he 
never  wrote  a  sermon  in  disguise,  or  attempted 
the  didactic,  the  ethical  element  in  his  tragedies 
is  so  pervasive  that  one  cannot  read  liim  without 
hating  sin  and  loving  virtue.  Thus  the  works  of 
the  man  who  is  perhaps  the  greatest  novelist  in 
history  are  in  harmony  with  what  we  recognise 
as  the  deepest  and  most  eternal  truth,  both  in  life 
and  in  our  own  hearts. 

The  silver  tones  and  subtle  music  of  Turgenev's 
clavichord  were  followed  by  the  crashing  force  of 
Tolstoi's  organ  harmonies,  and  by  the  thrilling, 
heart-piercing  discords  struck  by  Dostoevski.  Still 
more  sensational  sounds  come  from  the  younger 
Russian  men  of  to-day,  and  all  this  bewildering 
audacity  of  composition  has  in  certain  places 
drowned  for  a  time  the  less  pretentious  beauty  of 
Turgenev's  method.  During  the  early  years  of  the 
twentieth  century,  there  has  been  a  visible  reaction 
against  him,  an  attempt  to  persuade  the  world 
that  after  all  he  was  a  subordinate  and  secondary 
man.  This  attitude  is  shown  plainly  in  Mr. 
128 


TURGENEV 

Baring's  Landmarks  in  Russian  Literature,  whose 
book  is  chiefly  valuable  for  its  sympathetic  under- 
standing of  the  genius  of  Dostoevski.  How  far 
this  reaction  has  gone  may  be  seen  in  the  remark 
of  Professor  Bruckner,  in  his  Literary  History 
of  Russia:  "The  great,  healthy  artist  Turgenev 
always  moves  along  levelled  paths,  in  the  fair 
avenues  of  in  ancient  landowner's  park.  ./Esthetic 
pleasure  is  in  his  well-balanced  narrative  of  how 
Jack  and  Jill  did  not  come  together :  deeper  ideas 
he  in  no  wise  stirs  in  us."  If  A  House  of  Gentlefolk 
and  Fathers  and  Children  stir  no  deeper  ideas  than 
that  in  the  mind  of  Professor  Bruckner,  whose 
fault  is  it?  One  can  only  pity  him.  But  there 
are  still  left  some  humble  individuals,  at  least  one, 
who,  caring  little  for  politics  and  the  ephemeral 
nature  of  political  watchwords  and  party  strife, 
and  still  less  for  faddish  fashions  in  art,  persist 
in  giving  their  highest  homage  to  the  great  artists 
whose  work  shows  the  most  perfect  union  of  Truth 
and  Beauty. 


129 


IV 

DOSTOEVSKI 

THE  life  of  Dostoevski  contrasts  harshly  with  the 
luxurious  ease  and  steady  level  seen  in  the  outward 
existence  of  his  two  great  contemporaries,  Tur- 
genev  and  Tolstoi.  From  beginning  to  end  he 
lived  in  the  very  heart  of  storms,  in  the  midst  of 
mortal  coil.  He  was  often  as  poor  as  a  rat;  he 
suffered  from  a  horrible  disease;  he  was  sick  and 
in  prison,  and  no  one  visited  him;  he  knew  the 
bitterness  of  death.  Such  a  man's  testimony  as 
to  the  value  of  life  is  worth  attention;  he  was  a 
faithful  witness,  and  we  know  that  his  testimony  is 
true. 

Fedor  Mikhailovich  Dostoevski  was  born  on 
the  30  October  1821,  at  Moscow.  His  father 
was  a  poor  surgeon,  and  his  mother  the  daugh- 
ter of  a  mercantile  man.  He  was  acquainted  with 
grief  from  the  start,  being  born  in  a  hospital. 
There  were  five  children,  and  they  very  soon  dis- 
covered the  exact  meaning  of  such  words  as  hunger 
and  cold.  Poverty  in  early  years  sometimes  makes 
men  rather  close  and  miserly  in  middle  age,  as 
it  certainly  did  in  the  case  of  Ibsen,  who  seemed 
130 


DOSTOEVSKI 

to  think  that  charity  began  and  ended  at  home. 
Not  so  Dostoevski:  he  was  often  victimised,  he 
gave  freely  and  impulsively,  and  was  chronically 
in  debt.  He  had  about  as  much  business  instinct 
as  a  prize-fighter  or  an  opera  singer.  As  Merezh- 
kovski  puts  it :  "This  victim  of  poverty  dealt  with 
money  as  if  he  held  it  not  an  evil,  but  utter  rubbish. 
Dostoevski  thinks  he  loves  money,  but  money 
flees  him.  Tolstoi  thinks  he  hates  money,  but 
money  loves  him,  and  accumulates  about  him. 
The  one,  dreaming  all  his  life  of  wealth,  lived,  and 
but  for  his  wife's  business  qualities  would  have 
died,  a  beggar.  The  other,  all  his  life  dreaming 
and  preaching  of  poverty,  not  only  has  not  given 
away,  but  has  greatly  multiplied  his  very  sub- 
stantial possessions."  In  order  to  make  an  im- 
pressive contrast,  the  Russian  critic  is  here  unfair 
to  Tolstoi,  but  there  is  perhaps  some  truth  in  the 
Tolstoi  paradox.  No  wonder  Dostoevski  loved 
children,  for  he  was  himself  a  great  child. 

He  was  brought  up  on  the  Bible  and  the  Christian 
religion.  The  teachings  of  the  New  Testament 
were  with  him  almost  innate  ideas.  Thus,  al- 
though his  parents  could  not  give  him  wealth,  or 
ease,  or  comfort,  or  health,  they  gave  him  some- 
thing better  than  all  four  put  together. 

When  he  was  twenty-seven  years  old,  having 
impulsively  expressed  revolutionary  opinions  at 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

a  Radical  Club  to  which  he  belonged,  he  was  ar- 
rested with  a  number  of  his  mates,  and  after  an 
imprisonment  of  some  months,  he  was  led  out 
on  the  22  December  1849,  with  twenty-one  com- 
panions, to  the  scaffold.  He  passed  through  all 
the  horror  of  dying,  for  visible  preparations  had 
been  made  for  the  execution,  and  he  was  certain  that 
in  a  moment  he  would  cease  to  live.  Then  came 
the  news  that  the  Tsar  had  commuted  the  sentence 
to  hard  labour ;  this  saved  their  lives,  but  one  of 
the  sufferers  had  become  insane. 

Then  came  four  years  in  the  Siberian  prison,  fol- 
lowed by  a  few  years  of  enforced  military  service. 
His  health  actually  grew  better  under  the  cruel  re- 
gime of  the  prison,  which  is  not  difficult  to  under- 
stand, for  even  a  cruel  regime  is  better  than  none  at 
all,  and  Dostoevski  never  had  the  slightest  notion  of 
how  to  take  care  of  himself..  At  what  time  his 
epilepsy  began  is  obscure,  but  this  dreadful  disease 
faithfully  and  frequently  visited  him  during  his 
whole  adult  life.  From  a  curious  hint  that  he 
once  let  fall,  reenforced  by  the  manner  in  which 
the  poor  epileptic  in  The  Karamazov  Brothers  ac- 
quired the  falling  sickness,  we  cannot  help  think- 
ing that  its  origin  came  from  a  blow  given  in  anger 
by  his  father. 

Dostoevski  was  enormously  interested  in  his 
disease,  studied  its  symptoms  carefully,  one  might 
132 


DOSTOEVSKI 

say  eagerly,  and  gave  to  his  friends  minute  ac- 
counts of  exactly  how  he  felt  before  and  after  the 
convulsions,  which  tally  precisely  with  the  vivid 
descriptions  written  out  hi  his  novels.  This  ill- 
ness coloured  his  whole  life,  profoundly  affected 
his  character,  and  gave  a  feverish  and  hysterical 
tone  to  his  books. 

Dostoevski  had  a  tremendous  capacity  for  enthu- 
siasm. As  a  boy,  he  was  terribly  shaken  by  the 
death  of  Pushkin,  and  he  never  lost  his  admiration 
for  the  founder  of  Russian  literature.  He  read 
the  great  classics  of  antiquity  and  of  modern  Europe 
with  wild  excitement,  and  wrote  burning  eulogies 
in  letters  to  his  friends.  The  flame  of  his  literary 
ambition  was  not  quenched  by  the  most  abject 
poverty,  nor  by  the  death  of  those  whom  he  loved 
most  intensely.  After  his  first  wife  died,  he 
suffered  agonies  of  grief,  accentuated  by  wretched 
health,  public  neglect,  and  total  lack  of  financial 
resources.  But  chill  penury  could  not  repress  his 
noble  rage.  He  was  always  planning  and  writing 
new  novels,  even  when  he  had  no  p'ace  to  lay  his 
head.  And  the  bodily  distress  of  poverty  did  not 
cut  him  nearly  so  sharply  as  its  shame.  His  letters 
prove  clearly  that  at  times  he  suffered  in  the 
same  way  as  the  pitiable  hero  of  Poor  Folk.  That 
book  was  indeed  a  prophecy  of  the  author's  own 
life. 

133 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

It  is  impossible  to  exaggerate  the  difficulties 
under  which  he  wrote  his  greatest  novels.  His 
wife  and  children  were  literally  starving.  He 
could  not  get  money,  and  was  continually  harassed 
by  creditors.  During  part  of  the  time,  while  writ- 
ing in  the  midst  of  hunger  and  freezing  cold,  he  had 
an  epileptic  attack  every  ten  days.  His  comment 
on  all  this  is,  "I  am  only  preparing  to  live,"  which 
is  as  heroic  as  Paul  Jones's  shout,  "I  have  not  yet 
begun  to  fight." 

In  1880  a  monument  to  Pushkin  was  unveiled, 
and  the  greatest  Russian  authors  were  invited  to 
speak  at  the  ceremony.  This  was  the  occasion 
where  Turgenev  vainly  tried  to  persuade  Tolstoi 
to  appear  and  participate.  Dostoevski  paid  his 
youthful  debt  to  the  ever  living  poet  in  a  magnifi- 
cent manner.  He  made  a  wonderful  oration  on 
Russian  literature  and  the  future  of  the  Russian 
people,  an  address  that  thrilled  the  hearts  of  his 
hearers,  and  inspired  his  countrymen  everywhere. 
On  the  28  January  1881,  he  died,  and  forty  thou- 
sand mourners  saw  his  body  committed  to  the 
earth. 

Much  as  I  admire  the  brilliant  Russian  critic, 
Merezhkovski,  I  cannot  understand  his  statement 
that  Dostoevski  "drew  little  on  his  personal  ex- 
periences, had  little  self-consciousness,  complained 
of  no  one."  His  novels  are  filled  with  his  personal 


DOSTOEVSKI 

experiences,  he  had  an  almost  abnormal  self-con- 
sciousness, and  he  bitterly  complained  that  Tur- 
genev,  who  did  not  need  the  money,  received  much 
more  for  his  work  than  he. 

Dostoevski's  inequalities  as  a  writer  are  so  great 
that  it  is  no  wonder  he  has  been  condemned  by 
some  critics  as  a  mere  journalistic  maker  of  melo- 
drama, while  others  have  exhausted  their  entire 
stock  of  adjectives  in  his  exaltation.  His  most 
ardent  admirer  at  this  moment  is  Mr.  Baring, 
who  is  at  the  same  time  animated  by  a  strange 
jealousy  of  Turgenev's  fame,  and  seems  to  think 
it  necessary  to  belittle  the  author  of  Fathers  and 
Children  in  order  to  magnify  the  author  of  Crime 
and  Punishment.  This  seems  idle;  Turgenev  and 
Dostoevski  were  geniuses  of  a  totally  different 
order,  and  we  ought  to  rejoice  in  the  greatness  of 
each  man,  just  as  we  do  in  the  greatness  of  those  two 
entirely  dissimilar  poets,  Tennyson  and  Browning. 
Much  of  Mr.  Baring's  language  is  an  echo  of  Merezh- 
kovski ;  but  this  Russian  critic,  while  loving  Dos- 
toevski more  than  Turgenev,  was  not  at  all  blind 
to  the  latter's  supreme  qualities.  Listen  to  Mr. 
Baring :  — 

"He  possesses  a  certain  quality  which  is  different 
in  kind  from  those  of  any  other  writer,  a  power  of 
seeming  to  get  nearer  to  the  unknown,  to  what 
lies  beyond  the  flesh,  which  is  perhaps  the  secret  of 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

his  amazing  strength;  and,  besides  this,  he  has 
certain  great  qualities  which  other  writers,  and 
notably  other  Russian  writers,  possess  also ;  but 
he  has  them  in  so  far  higher  a  degree  that  when 
seen  with  other  writers  he  annihilates  them.  The 
combination  of  this  difference  in  kind  and  this 
difference  in  degree  makes  something  so  strong 
and  so  tremendous,  that  it  is  not  to  be  wondered 
at  when  we  find  many  critics  saying  that  Dostoevski 
is  not  only  the  greatest  of  all  Russian  writers,  but 
one  of  the  greatest  writers  that  the  world  has  ever 
seen.  I  am  not  exaggerating  when  I  say  that  such 
views  are  held ;  for  instance,  Professor  Bruckner,  a 
most  level-headed  critic,  in  his  learned  and  ex- 
haustive survey  of  Russian  literature,  says  that  it 
is  not  in  Faust,  but  rather  in  Crime  and  Punishment, 
that  the  whole  grief  of  mankind  takes  hold  of  us. 

"Even  making  allowance  for  the  enthusiasm 
of  his  admirers,  it  is  true  to  say  that  almost  any 
Russian  judge  of  literature  at  the  present  day 
would  place  Dostoevski  as  being  equal  to  Tolstoi 
and  immeasurably  above  Turgenev;  in  fact,  the 
ordinary  Russian  critic  at  the  present  day  no  more 
dreams  of  comparing  Turgenev  with  Dostoevski, 
than  it  would  occur  to  an  Englishman  to  compare 
Charlotte  Yonge  with  Charlotte  Bronte." 

This  last  sentence  shows  the  real  animus  against 
Turgenev  that  obsesses  Mr.  Baring's  mind ;  once 
136 


DOSTOEVSKI 

more  the  reader  queries,  Suppose  Dostoevski  be 
all  that  Mr.  Baring  claims  for  him,  why  is  it  nec- 
essary to  attack  Turgenev?  Is  there  not  room 
in  Russian  literature  for  both  men?  But  as  Mr. 
Baring  has  appealed  to  Russian  criticism,  it  is  only 
fair  to  quote  one  Russian  critic  of  good  standing, 
Kropotkin.  He  says :  — 

"Dostoevski  is  still  very  much  read  in  Russia; 
and  when,  some  twenty  years  ago,  his  novels  were 
first  translated  into  French,  German,  and  English, 
they  were  received  as  a  revelation.  He  was  praised 
as  one  of  the  greatest  writers  of  our  own  time, 
and  as  undoubtedly  the  one  who  'had  best  ex- 
pressed the  mystic  Slavonic  soul '  —  whatever 
that  expression  may  mean  !  Turgenev  was  eclipsed 
by  Dostoevski,  and  Tolstoi  was  forgotten  for  a 
time.  There  was,  of  course,  a  great  deal  of  hys- 
terical exaggeration  in  all  this,  and  at  the  present 
time  sound  literary  critics  do  not  venture  to  indulge 
in  such  praises.  The  fact  is,  that  there  is  certainly  a 
great  deal  of  power  in  whatever  Dostoevski  wrote : 
his  powers  of  creation  suggest  those  of  Hoffmann ; 
and  his  sympathy  with  the  most  down-trodden 
and  down-cast  products  of  the  civilisation  of  our 
large  towns  is  so  deep  that  it  carries  away  the  most 
indifferent  reader  and  exercises  a  most  powerful 
impression  in  the  right  direction  upon  young 
readers.  His  analysis  of  the  most  varied  speci- 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

mens  of  incipient  psychical  disease  is  said  to  be 
thoroughly  correct.  But  with  all  that,  the  artistic 
qualities  of  his  novels  are  incomparably  below 
those  of  any  one  of  the  great  Russian  masters: 
Tolstoi,  Turgenev,  or  Goncharov.  Pages  of  con- 
summate realism  are  interwoven  with  the  most 
fantastical  incidents  worthy  only  of  the  most  in- 
corrigible romantics.  Scenes  of  a  thrilling  inter- 
est are  interrupted  in  order  to  introduce  a  score 
of  pages  of  the  most  unnatural  theoretical  dis- 
cussions. Besides,  the  author  is  in  such  a  hurry 
that  he  seems  never  to  have  had  the  time  himself 
to  read  over  his  novels  before  sending  them  to  the 
printer.  And,  worst  of  ah1,  every  one  of  the  heroes 
of  Dostoevski,  especially  in  his  novels  of  the  later 
period,  is  a  person  suffering  from  some  psychical 
disease  or  from  moral  perversion.  As  a  result, 
while  one  may  read  some  of  the  novels  of  Dos- 
toevski with  the  greatest  interest,  one  is  never 
tempted  to  re-read  them,  as  one  re-reads  the  novels 
of  Tolstoi  and  Turgenev,  and  even  those  of  many 
secondary  novel  writers;  and  the  present  writer 
must  confess  that  he  had  the  greatest  pain  lately 
in  reading  through,  for  instance,  The  Brothers 
Karamazov,  and  never  could  pull  himself  through 
such  a  novel  as  The  Idiot.  However,  one  pardons 
Dostoevski  everything,  because  when  he  speaks 
of  the  ill-treated  and  the  forgotten  children  of  our 
138 


DOSTOEVSKI 

town  civilisation  he  becomes  truly  great  through 
his  wide,  infinite  love  of  mankind  —  of  man,  even 
in  his  worst  manifestations." 

Mr.  Baring's  book  was  published  in  1910,  Kro- 
potkin's  in  1905,  which  seems  to  make  Mr.  Baring's 
attitude  point  to  the  past,  rather  than  to  the  future. 
Kropotkin  seems  to  imply  that  the  wave  of 
enthusiasm  for  Dostoevski  is  a  phase  that  has 
already  passed,  rather  than  a  new  and  increasing 
demonstration,  as  Mr.  Baring  would  have  us 
believe. 

Dostoevski's  first  book,  Poor  Folk,  appeared 
when  he  was  only  twenty-five  years  old :  it  made 
an  instant  success,  and  gave  the  young  author  an 
enviable  reputation.  The  manuscript  was  given 
by  a  friend  to  the  poet  Nekrassov.  Kropotkin 
says  that  Dostoevski  "had  inwardly  doubted 
whether  the  novel  would  even  be  read  by  the  editor. 
He  was  living  then  in  a  poor,  miserable  room,  and 
was  fast  asleep  when  at  four  o'clock  in  the  morning 
Nekrassov  and  Grigorovich  knocked  at  his  door. 
They  threw  themselves  on  Dostoevski's  neck, 
congratulating  him  with  tears  in  their  eyes.  Nek- 
rassov and  his  friend  had  begun  to  read  the  novel 
late  in  the  evening;  they  could  not  stop  reading 
till  they  came  to  the  end,  and  they  were  both  so 
deeply  impressed  by  it  that  they  could  not  help 
going  on  this  nocturnal  expedition  to  see  the  author 
139 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

and  tell  him  what  they  felt.  A  few  days  later, 
Dostoevski  was  introduced  to  the  great  critic 
of  the  time,  Bielinski,  and  from  him  he  re- 
ceived the  same  warm  reception.  As  to  the 
reading  public,  the  novel  produced  quite  a 
sensation." 

The  story  Poor  Folk  is  told  in  the  highly  artificial 
form  of  letters,  but  is  redeemed  by  its  simplicity 
and  deep  tenderness.  Probably  no  man  ever  lived 
who  had  a  bigger  or  warmer  heart  than  Dostoevski, 
and  out  of  the  abundance  of  the  heart  the  mouth 
speaketh.  All'  the  great  qualities  of  the  mature 
man  are  in  this  slender  volume  :  the  wideness  of  his 
mercy,  the  great  deeps  of  his  pity,  the  boundless- 
ness of  his  sympathy,  and  his  amazing  spiritual 
force.  If  ever  there  was  a  person  who  would  for- 
give any  human  being  anything  seventy  times  seven, 
that  individual  was  Dostoevski.  He  never  had  to 
learn  the  lesson  of  brotherly  love  by  long  years  of 
experience :  the  mystery  of  the  Gospel,  hidden  from 
the  wise  and  prudent,  was  revealed  to  him  as  a  babe. 
The  language  of  these  letters  is  so  simple  that  a  child 
could  understand  every  word ;  but  the  secrets  of 
the  human  heart  are  laid  bare.  The  lover  is  a 
grey-haired  old  man,  with  the  true  Slavonic  genius 
for  failure,  and  a  hopeless  drunkard ;  the  young  girl 
is  a  veritable  flower  of  the  slums,  shedding  abroad 
the  radiance  and  perfume  of  her  soul  in  a  sullen 
140 


DOSTOEVSKI 

and  sodden  environment.  She  has  a  purity  of  soul 
that  will  not  take  pollution. 

"See  how  this  mere  chance-sown  cleft-nursed  seed 
That  sprang  up  by  the  wayside  'neath  the  foot 
Of  the  enemy,  this  breaks  all  into  blaze, 
Spreads  itself,  one  wide  glory  of  desire 
To  incorporate  the  whole  great  sun  it  loves 
From  the  inch-height  whence  it  looks  and  longs ! " 

No  one  can  read  a  book  like  this  without  being  bet- 
ter for  it,  and  without  loving  its  author. 

It  is  unfortunate  that  Dostoevski  did  not  learn 
from  his  first  little  masterpiece  the  great  virtue  of 
compression.  This  story  is  short,  but  it  is  long 
enough;  the  whole  history  of  two  lives,  so  far  as 
their  spiritual  aspect  is  concerned,  is  fully  given  in 
these  few  pages.  The  besetting  sin  of  Dostoevski 
is  endless  garrulity  with  its  accompanying  demon 
of  incoherence :  in  later  years  he  yielded  to  that,  as 
he  did  to  other  temptations,  and  it  finally  mas- 
tered him.  He  was  never  to  write  again  a  work 
of  art  that  had  organic  unity. 

Like  all  the  great  Russian  novelists,  Dostoevski 
went  to  school  to  Gogol.  The  influence  of  his 
teacher  is  evident  throughout  Poor  Folk.  The  hero 
is  almost  an  imitation  of  the  man  in  Gogol's  short 
story,  The  Cloak,  affording  another  striking  example 
of  the  germinal  power  of  that  immortal  work. 
Dostoevski  seemed  fully  to  realise  his  debt  to  Gogol, 
141 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

and  in  particular  to  The  Cloak;  for  in  Poor  Folk, 
one  entire  letter  is  taken  up  with  a  description  of 
Makar's  emotions  after  reading  that  extraordinary 
tale.  Makar  assumes  that  it  is  a  description  of 
himself.  "Why,  I  hardly  dare  show  myself  in  the 
streets !  Everything  is  so  accurately  described 
that  one's  very  gait  is  recognisable." 

Dostoevski's  consuming  ambition  for  literary 
fame  is  well  indicated  in  his  first  book.  "If  any- 
thing be  well  written,  Varinka,  it  is  literature.  I 
learned  this  the  day  before  yesterday.  What  a 
wonderful  thing  literature  is,  which,  consisting  but 
of  printed  words,  is  able  to  invigorate,  to  instruct, 
the  hearts  of  men!" 

So  many  writers  have  made  false  starts  in  litera- 
ture that  Dostoevski's  instinct  for  the  right  path  at 
the  very  outset  is  something  notable.  His  entire 
literary  career  was  to  be  spent  in  portraying  the 
despised  and  rejected.  Never  has  a  great  author's 
first  book  more  clearly  revealed  the  peculiar  quali- 
ties of  his  mind  and  heart. 

But  although  he  struck  the  right  path,  it  was  a 
long  time  before  he  found  again  the  right  vein.  He 
followed  up  his  first  success  with  a  row  of  failures, 
whose  cold  reception  by  the  public  nearly  broke  his 
heart.  He  was  extremely  busy,  extremely  produc- 
tive, and  extremely  careless,  as  is  shown  by  the  fact 
that  during  the  short  period  from  1846  to  1849,  he 
142 


DOSTOEVSKI 

launched  thirteen  original  publications,  not  a  single 
one  of  which  added  anything  to  his  fame.  It  was 
not  until  after  the  cruel  years  of  Siberia  that  the 
great  books  began  to  appear. 

Nor  did  they  appear  at  once.  In  1859  he  pub- 
lished The  Uncle's  Dream,  a  society  novel,  showing 
both  in  its  humour  and  in  its  ruthless  satire  the  in- 
fluence of  Gogol.  This  is  an  exceedingly  entertain- 
ing book,  and,  a  strange  thing  in  Dostoevski,  it  is, 
in  many  places,  hilariously  funny.  The  satire  is 
so  enormously  exaggerated  that  it  completely  over- 
shoots the  mark,  but  perhaps  this  very  exaggeration 
adds  to  the  reader's  merriment.  The  conversation 
in  this  story  is  often  brilliant,  full  of  unexpected 
quips  and  retorts  delivered  in  a  manner  far  more 
French  than  Russian.  The  intention  of  the  author 
seems  to  have  been  to  write  a  scathing  and  terrible 
satire  on  provincial  society,  where  every  one  almost 
without  exception  is  represented  as  absolutely  selfish, 
absolutely  conceited,  and  absolutely  heartless.  It 
is  a  study  of  village  gossip,  a  favourite  subject  for 
satirists  in  all  languages.  In  the  middle  of  the  book 
Dostoevski  remarks  :  "Everybody  in  the  provinces 
lives  as  though  he  were  under  a  bell  of  glass.  It  is 
impossible  for  him  to  conceal  anything  whatever 
from  his  honourable  fellow-citizens.  They  know 
things  about  him  of  which  he  himself  is  ignorant. 
The  provincial,  by  his  very  nature,  ought  to  be  a 
J43 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

very  profound  psychologist.  That  is  why  I  am 
sometimes  honestly  amazed  to  meet  in  the  provinces 
so  few  psychologists  and  so  many  imbeciles." 

Never  again  did  Dostoevski  write  a  book  contain- 
ing so  little  of  himself,  and  so  little  of  the  native 
Russian  element.  Leaving  out  the  exaggeration,  it 
might  apply  to  almost  any  village  in  any  country, 
and  instead  of  sympathy,  it  shows  only  scorn.  The 
scheming  mother,  who  attempts  to  marry  her 
beautiful  daughter  to  a  Prince  rotten  with  diseases, 
is  a  stock  figure  on  the  stage  and  in  novels.  The 
only  truly  Russian  personage  is  the  young  lover, 
weak-willed  and  irresolute,  who  lives  a  coward  in 
his  own  esteem. 

This  novel  was  immediately  followed  by  another 
within  the  same  year,  Stepanchikovo  Village,  trans- 
lated into  English  with  the  title  The  Friend  of  the 
Family.  This  has  for  its  hero  one  of  the  most  re- 
markable of  Dostoevski's  characters,  and  yet  one 
who  infallibly  reminds  us  of  Dickens's  Pecksniff. 
The  story  is  told  in  the  first  person,  and  while  it 
cannot  by  any  stretch  of  language  be  called  a 
great  book,  it  has  one  advantage  over  its  author's 
works  of  genius,  in  being  interesting  from  the  first 
page  to  the  last.  Both  the  uncle  and  the  nephew, 
who  narrate  the  tale,  are  true  Russian  characters : 
they  suffer  long,  and  are  kind ;  they  hope  all  things, 
and  believe  all  things.  The  household  is  such  a 
144 


DOSTOEVSKI 

menagerie  that  it  is  no  wonder  that  the  German 
translation  of  this  novel  is  called  Tollhaus  oder  Her- 
renhaus?  Some  of  the  inmates  are  merely  abnor- 
mal;  others  are  downright  mad.  There  is  not  a 
natural  or  a  normal  character  in  the  entire  book, 
and  not  one  of  the  persons  holds  the  reader's  sym- 
pathy, though  frequent  drafts  are  made  on  his  pity. 
The  hero  is  a  colossal  hypocrite,  hopelessly  exag- 
gerated. If  one  finds  Dickens's  characters  to  be 
caricatures,  what  shall  be  said  of  this  collection? 
This  is  the  very  apotheosis  of  the  unctuous  gasbag, 
from  whose  mouth,  eternally  ajar,  pours  a  viscous 
stream  of  religious  and  moral  exhortation.  Com- 
pared with  this  Friend  of  the  Family,  Tartuffe  was 
unselfish  and  noble:  Joseph  Surface  modest  and 
retiring  ;  Pecksniff  a  humble  and  loyal  man.  The 
best  scene  in  the  story,  and  one  that  arouses  out- 
rageous mirth,  is  the  scene  where  the  uncle,  who 
is  a  kind  of  Tom  Pinch,  suddenly  revolts,  and  for  a 
moment  shakes  off  his  bondage.  He  seizes  the  fat 
hypocrite  by  the  shoulder,  lifts  him  from  the  floor, 
and  hurls  his  carcass  through  a  glass  door.  All  of 
which  is  in  the  exact  manner  of  Dickens. 

One  of  the  most  characteristic  of  Dostoevski's 
novels,  characteristic  in  its  occasional  passages  of 
wonderful  beauty  and  pathos,  characteristic  in  its 
utter  formlessness  and  long  stretches  of  uninspired 
dulness,  is  Downtrodden  and  Oppressed.  Here  the 

!•  145 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

author  gives  us  the  life  he  knew  best  by  actual  ex- 
perience and  the  life  best  suited  to  his  natural  gifts 
of  sympathetic  interpretation.  Stevenson's  com- 
ment on  this  story  has  attracted  much  attention. 
Writing  to  John  Addington  Symonds  in  1886,  he 
said:  "Another  has  been  translated  —  Humilies 
et  0/enses.  It  is  even  more  incoherent  than  Le 
Crime  et  le  Chdtiment,  but  breathes  much  of  the 
same  lovely  goodness,  and  has  passages  of  power. 
Dostoevski  is  a  devil  of  a  swell,  to  be  sure." 
There  is  no  scorn  and  no  satire  in  this  book ;  it  was 
written  from  an  overflowing  heart.  One  of  the 
speeches  of  the  spineless  young  Russian,  Alosha, 
might  be  taken  as  illustrative  of  the  life-purpose  of 
our  novelist :  "I  am  on  fire  for  high  and  noble 
ideals ;  they  may  be  false,  but  the  basis  on  which 
they  rest  is  holy." 

Downtrodden  and  Oppressed  is  full  of  melodrama 
and  full  of  tears ;  it  is  four  times  too  long,  being 
stuffed  out  with  interminable  discussions  and  vain 
repetitions.  It  has  no  beauty  of  construction,  no 
evolution,  and  irritates  the  reader  beyond  all  en- 
durance. The  young  hero  is  a  blazing  ass,  who  is  in 
love  with  two  girls  at  the  same  time,  and  whose 
fluency  of  speech  is  in  inverse  proportion  to  his 
power  of  will.  The  real  problem  of  the  book  is  how 
either  of  the  girls  could  have  tolerated  his  presence 
for  five  minutes.  The  hero's  father  is  a  melo- 
146 


DOSTOEVSKI 

dramatic  villain,  who  ought  to  have  worn  patent- 
leather  boots  and  a  Spanish  cloak.  And  yet, 
with  all  its  glaring  faults,  it  is  a  story  the  pages  of 
which  ought  not  to  be  skipped.  So  far  as  the  nar- 
rative goes,  one  may  skip  a  score  of  leaves  at  will ; 
but  in  the  midst  of  aimless  and  weary  gabble,  pas- 
sages of  extraordinary  beauty  and  uncanny  insight 
strike  out  with  the  force  of  a  sudden  blow.  The 
influence  of  Dickens  is  once  more  clearly  seen  in  the 
sickly  little  girl  Nelly,  whose  strange  caprices  and 
flashes  of  passion  are  like  Goethe's  Mignon,  but 
whose  bad  health  and  lingering  death  recall  ir- 
resistibly Little  Nell.  They  are  similar  in  much 
more  than  in  name. 

Dostoevski  told  the  secrets  of  his  prison-house  in 
his  great  book  Memoirs  of  a  House  of  the  Dead  — 
translated  into  English  with  the  title  Buried  Alive. 
Of  the  many  works  that  have  come  from  prison- 
walls  to  enrich  literature,  and  their  number  is 
legion,  this  is  one  of  the  most  powerful,  because  one 
of  the  most  truthful  and  sincere.  It  is  not  nearly 
so  well  written  as  Oscar  Wilde's  De  Profundis; 
but  one  cannot  escape  the  suspicion  that  this  latter 
masterpiece  was  a  brilliant  pose.  Dostoevski's 
House  of  the  Dead  is  marked  by  that  nai've  Russian 
simplicity  that  goes  not  to  the  reader's  head  but  to 
his  heart.  It  is  at  the  farthest  remove  from  a  well- 
constructed  novel ;  it  is  indeed  simply  an  irregular, 
147 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

incoherent  notebook.  But  if  the  shop-worn  phrase 
"human  document"  can  ever  be  fittingly  applied, 
no  better  instance  can  be  found  than  this.  It  is  a 
revelation  of  Dostoevski's  all-embracing  sympathy. 
He  shows  no  bitterness,  no  spirit  of  revenge,  toward 
the  government  that  sent  him  into  penal  servitude ; 
he  merely  describes  what  happened  there.  Nor 
does  he  attempt  to  arouse  our  sympathy  for  his 
fellow-convicts  by  depicting  them  as  heroes,  or  in 
showing  their  innate  nobleness.  They  are  indeed  a 
bad  lot,  and  one  is  forced  to  the  conviction  that  they 
ought  not  to  be  at  large.  Confinement  and  hard 
labour  is  what  most  of  them  need  ;  for  the  majority 
of  them  in  this  particular  Siberian  prison  are  not 
revolutionists,  offenders  against  the  government, 
sent  there  for  some  petty  or  trumped-up  charge,  but 
cold-blooded  murderers,  fiendishly  cruel  assassins, 
wife-beaters,  dull,  degraded  brutes.  But  the  regime, 
as  our  novelist  describes  it,  does  not  improve  them ; 
the  officers  are  as  brutal  as  the  men,  and  the  flog- 
gings do  not  make  for  spiritual  culture.  One  can- 
not wish,  after  reading  the  book,  that  such  prisoners 
were  free,  but  one  cannot  help  thinking  that  some- 
thing is  rotten  in  the  state  of  their  imprisonment. 
Dostoevski  brings  out  with  great  clearness  the  utter 
childishness  of  the  prisoners;  mentally,  they  are 
just  bad  little  boys ;  they  seem  never  to  have  de- 
veloped, except  in  an  increased  capacity  for  sin. 
148 


DOSTOEVSKI 

They  spend  what  time  they  have  in  silly  talk,  in 
purposeless  discussions,  in  endeavours  to  get  drink, 
in  practical  jokes,  and  in  thefts  from  one  another. 
The  cruel  pathos  of  the  story  is  not  in  the  fact  that 
such  men  are  in  prison,  but  that  a  Dostoevski  should 
be  among  them.  Here  is  a  delicate,  sensitive  man  of 
genius,  in  bad  health,  with  a  highly  organised  ner- 
vous system,  with  a  wonderful  imagination,  con- 
demned to  live  for  years  in  slimy  misery,  with 
creatures  far  worse  than  the  beasts  of  the  field.  In- 
deed, some  of  the  most  beautiful  parts  of  the  story 
are  where  Dostoevski  turns  from  the  men  to  the 
prison  dog  and  the  prison  horse,  and  there  finds  true 
friendship.  His  kindness  to  the  neglected  dog  and 
the  latter's  surprise  and  subsequent  devotion  make 
a  deep  impression.  The  greatness  of  Dostoevski's 
heart  is  shown  in  the  fact  that  although  his  com- 
rades were  detestable  characters,  he  did  not  hate 
them.  His  calm  account  of  their  unblushing  knav- 
ery is  entirely  free  from  either  vindictive  malice 
or  superior  contempt.  He  loved  them  because  they 
were  buried  alive,  he  loved  them  because  of  their 
wretchedness,  with  a  love  as  far  removed  from  con- 
descension as  it  was  from  secret  admiration  of  their 
bold  wickedness.  There  was  about  these  men  no 
charm  of  personality  and  no  glamour  of  desperate 
crime.  The  delightful  thing  about  Dostoevski's 
attitude  is  that  it  was  so  perfect  an  exemplification 
149 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

of  true  Christianity.  No  pride,  no  scorn,  no  envy. 
He  regarded  them  as  his  brothers,  and  one  feels 
that  not  one  of  the  men  would  ever  have  turned  to 
Dostoevski  for  sympathy  and  encouragement  with- 
out meeting  an  instant  and  warm  response.  That 
prison  was  a  great  training-school  for  Dostoevski's 
genius,  and  instead  of  casting  a  black  shadow  over 
his  subsequent  life,  it  furnished  him  with  the  neces- 
sary light  and  heat  to  produce  a  succession  of  great 
novels. 

Their  production  was,  however,  irregular,  and  at 
intervals  he  continued  to  write  and  publish  books 
of  no  importance.  One  of  his  poorest  stories  is 
called  Memoirs  of  the  Cellarage,  or,  as  the  French 
translation  has  it,  L'Esprit  Souterrain.  The  two 
parts  of  the  story  contain  two  curious  types  of 
women.  The  hero  is  the  regulation  weak-willed  Rus- 
sian; his  singular  adventures  with  an  old  criminal 
and  his  mistress  in  the  first  part  of  the  story,  and 
with  a  harlot  in  the  second,  have  only  occasional  and 
languid  interest;  it  is  one  of  the  many  books  of 
Dostoevski  that  one  vigorously  vows  never  to  read 
again.  The  sickly  and  impractical  Ordinov  spends 
most  of  his  time  analysing  his  mental  states,  and 
indulging  in  that  ecstasy  of  thought  which  is  per- 
haps the  most  fatal  of  all  Slavonic  passions.  Soon 
after  appeared  a  strange  and  far  better  novel, 
called  Tfie  Gambler.  This  story  is  told  in  the  first 
150 


DOSTOEVSKI 

person,  and  contains  a  group  of  highly  interesting 
characters,  the  best  being  an  old  woman,  whose 
goodness  of  heart,  extraordinary  vitality,  and  fond- 
ness for  speaking  her  mind  recall  the  best  type  of 
English  Duchess  of  the  eighteenth  century.  There 
is  not  a  dull  page  in  this  short  book ;  and  often  as 
the  obsession  of  gambling  has  been  represented  in 
fiction,  I  do  not  at  this  moment  remember  any  other 
story  where  the  fierce,  consuming  power  of  this 
heart-eating  passion  has  been  more  powerfully 
pictured.  No  reader  will  ever  forget  the  one  day  in 
the  sensible  old  lady's  life  when  all  her  years  of  train- 
ing, all  her  natural  caution  and  splendid  common 
sense,  could  not  keep  her  away  from  the  gaming 
table.  This  is  a  kind  of  international  novel,  where 
the  English,  French,  German,  and  Russian  temper- 
aments are  analysed,  perhaps  with  more  cleverness 
than  accuracy.  The  Englishman,  Astley,  is  utterly 
unreal,  Paulina  is  impossible,  and  the  Slavophil 
attacks  on  the  French  are  rather  pointless.  Some 
of  the  characters  are  incomprehensible,  but  none  of 
them  lacks  interest. 

Of  all  Dostoevski's  novels,  the  one  best  known 
outside  of  Russia  is,  of  course,  Crime  and  Punish- 
ment. Indeed,  his  fame  in  England  and  in  America 
may  be  said  still  to  depend  almost  entirely  on  this 
one  book.  It  was  translated  into  French,  German, 
and  English  in  the  eighties,  and  has  been  dramatised 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

in  France  and  in  America.  While  it  is  assuredly  a 
great  work,  and  one  that  nobody  except  a  genius 
could  have  written,  I  do  not  think  it  is  Dostoev- 
ski's most  characteristic  novel,  nor  his  best.  It  is 
characteristic  in  its  faults ;  it  is  abominably  diffuse, 
filled  with  extraneous  and  superfluous  matter,  and 
totally  lacking  in  the  principles  of  good  construc- 
tion. There  are  scenes  of  positively  breathless 
excitement,  preceded  and  followed  by  dreary 
drivel ;  but  the  success  of  the  book  does  not  depend 
on  its  action,  but  rather  on  the  characters  of  Sonia, 
her  maudlin  father,  the  student  Raskolnikov,  and 
his  sister.  It  is  impossible  to  read  Crime  and  Pun- 
ishment without  reverently  saluting  the  author's 
power.  As  is  well  known,  the  story  gave  Steven- 
son all  kinds  of  thrills,  and  in  a  famous  letter  written 
while  completely  under  the  spell  he  said  :  "Ras- 
kolnikov is  easily  the  greatest  book  I  have  read  in 
ten  years ;  I  anTglad  you  took  to  it.  Many  find  it 
dull ;  Henry  James  could  not  finish  it ;  all  I  can 
say  is,  it  nearly  finished  me.  It  was  like  having  an 
illness.  James  did  not  care  for  it  because  the  char- 
acter of  Raskolnikov  was  not  objective;  and  at 
that  I  divined  a  great  gulf  between  us,  and,  on 
further  reflection,  the  existence  of  a  certain  impo- 
tence in  many  minds  of  to-day,  which  prevents 
them  from  living  in  a  book  or  a  character,  and  keeps 
them  standing  afar  off,  spectators  of  a  puppet 
152 


DOSTOEVSKI 

show.  To  such  I  suppose  the  book  may  seem  empty 
in  the  centre ;  to  the  others  it  is  a  room,  a  house 
of  life,  into  which  they  themselves  enter,  and  are 
purified.  The  Juge  dTnstruction  I  thought  a 
wonderful,  weird,  touching,  ingenious  creation ; 
the  drunken  father,  and  Sonia,  and  the  student 
friend,  and  the  uncircumscribed,  protoplasmic 
humanity  of  Raskolnikov,  all  upon  a  level  that 
filled  me  with  wonder ;  the  execution,  also,  superb 
in  places." 

Dostoevski  is  fond  of  interrupting  the  course  of 
his  narratives  with  dreams,  —  dreams  that  often 
have  no  connection  with  the  plot,  so  far  as  there  may 
be  said  to  exist  a  plot,  —  but  dreams  of  vivid  and 
sharp  verisimilitude.  Whether  these  dreams  were 
interjected  to  deceive  the  reader,  or  merely  to  in- 
dulge the  novelist's  whimsical  fancy,  is  hard  to 
divine;  but  one  always  wakes  with  surprise  to 
find  that  it  is  all  a  dream.  A  few  hours  before 
Svidrigailov  commits  suicide  he  has  an  extraordinary 
dream  of  the  cold,  wet,  friendless  little  girl,  whom  he 
places  tenderly  in  a  warm  bed,  and  whose  childish 
eyes  suddenly  give  him  the  leer  of  a  French  harlot. 
Both  he  and  the  reader  are  amazed  to  find  that  this 
is  only  a  dream,  so  terribly  real  has  it  seemed. 
Then  Raskolnikov's  awful  dream,  so  minutely 
circumstanced,  of  the  cruel  peasants  maltreating 
a  horse,  their  drunken  laughter  and  vicious  conver- 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

sation,  their  fury  that  they  cannot  kill  the  mare  with 
one  blow,  and  the  wretched  animal's  slow  death 
makes  a  picture  that  I  have  long  tried  in  vain  to 
forget.  These  dream  episodes  have  absolutely  no 
connection  with  the  course  of  the  story  —  they  are 
simply  impressionistic  sketches. 

Another  favourite  device  of  Dostoevski's  is  to 
have  one  of  his  characters  take  a  walk,  and  on  this 
walk  undergo  some  experience  that  has  nothing 
whatever  to  do  with  the  course  of  the  action,  but  is, 
as  it  were,  a  miniature  story  of  its  own  introduced 
into  the  novel.  One  often  remembers  these  while 
forgetting  many  vital  constructive  features.  That 
picture  of  the  pretty  young  girl,  fifteen  or  sixteen 
years  old,  staggering  about  in  the  heat  of  the  early 
afternoon,  completely  drunk,  while  a  fat  libertine 
slowly  approaches  her,  like  a  vulture  after  its  prey, 
stirs  Raskolnikov  to  rage  and  then  to  reflection  — 
but  the  reader  remembers  it  long  after  it  has  passed 
from  the  hero's  mind.  Dostoevski's  books  are  full 
of  disconnected  but  painfully  oppressive  incidents. 

Raskolnikov's  character  cannot  be  described  nor 
appraised ;  one  must  follow  him  all  the  way  through 
the  long  novel.  He  is  once  more  the  Rudin  type  — 
utterly  irresolute,  with  a  mind  teeming  with  ideas 
and  surging  with  ambition.  He  wants  to  be  a 
Russian  Napoleon,  with  a  completely  subservient 
conscience,  but  instead  of  murdering  on  a  large 


DOSTOEVSKI 

scale,  like  his  ideal,  he  butchers  two  inoffensive  old 
women.  Although  the  ghastly  details  of  this  double 
murder  are  given  with  definite  realism,  Dostoevski's 
interest  is  wholly  in  the  criminal  psychology  of  the 
affair,  in  the  analysis  of  Raskolnikov's  mind  be- 
fore, during,  and  chiefly  after  the  murder ;  for  it  is 
the  mind,  and  not  the  bodily  sensations  that  con- 
stitute the  chosen  field  of  our  novelist.  After  this 
event,  the  student  passes  through  almost  every 
conceivable  mental  state ;  we  study  all  these  shift- 
ing moods  under  a  powerful  microscope.  The 
assassin  is  redeemed  by  the  harlot  Sonia,  who  be- 
comes his  religious  and  moral  teacher.  The  scene 
where  the  two  read  together  the  story  of  the  resur- 
rection of  Lazarus,  and  where  they  talk  about  God, 
prayer,  and  the  Christian  religion,  shows  the  spirit- 
ual force  of  Dostoevski  in  its  brightest  manifesta- 
tions. At  her  persuasion,  he  finally  confesses  his 
crime,  and  is  deported  to  Siberia,  where  his  expe- 
riences are  copied  faithfully  from  the  author's  own 
prison  life.  Sonia  accompanies  him,  and  becomes 
the  good  angel  of  the  convicts,  who  adore  her. 
"When  she  appeared  while  they  were  at  work,  all 
took  off  their  hats  and  made  a  bow.  '  Little  mother, 
Sophia  Semenova,  thou  art  our  mother,  tender  and 
compassionate,'  these  churlish  and  branded  felons 
said  to  her.  She  smiled  in  return  ;  they  loved  even 
to  see  her  walk,  and  turned  to  look  upon  her  as  she 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

passed  by.  They  praised  her  for  being  so  little, 
and  knew  not  what  not  to  praise  her  for.  They 
even  went  to  her  with  their'  ailments." 

It  is  quite  possible  that  Tolstoi  got  the  inspiration 
for  his  novel  Resurrection  from  the  closing  words  of 
Crime  and  Punishment.  Raskolnikov  and  Sonia 
look  forward  happily  to  the  tune  when  he  will  be 
released.  "Seven  years  —  only  seven  years!  At 
the  commencement  of  their  happiness  they  were 
ready  to  look  upon  these  seven  years  as  seven  days. 
They  did  not  know  that  a  new  life  is  not  given  for 
nothing ;  that  it  has  to  be  paid  dearly  for,  and  only 
acquired  by  much  patience  and  suffering,  and  great 
future  efforts.  But  now  a  new  history  commences ; 
a  story  of  the  gradual  renewing  of  a  man,  of  his  slow, 
progressive  regeneration,  and  change  from  one  world 
to  another  —  an  introduction  to  the  hitherto  un- 
known realities  of  life.  This  may  well  form  the 
theme  of  a  new  tale ;  the  one  we  wished  to  offer  the 
reader  is  ended." 

It  did  indeed  form  the  theme  of  a  new  tale  —  and 
the  tale  was  Tolstoi's  Resurrection. 

Sonia  is  the  greatest  of  all  Dostoevski's  woman 
characters.  The  professional  harlot  has  often  been 
presented  on  the  stage  and  in  the  pages  of  fiction, 
but  after  learning  to  know  Sonia,  the  others  seem 
weakly  artificial.  This  girl,  whose  father's  passion 
for  drink  is  something  worse  than  madness,  goes 
156 


DOSTOEVSKI 

on  the  street  to  save  the  family  from  starvation. 
It  is  the  sacrifice  of  Monna  Vanna  without  any 
reward  or  spectacular  acclaim.  Deeply  spiritual, 
intensely  religious,  she  is  the  illumination  of  the 
book,  and  seems  to  have  stepped  out  of  the  pages  of 
the  New  Testament.  Her  whole  story  is  like  a 
Gospel  parable,  and  she  has  saved1  many  besides 
Raskolnikov.  .  .  .  She  dies  daily,  and  from  her 
sacrifice  rises  a  life  of  eternal  beauty. 

Two  years  later  came  another  book  of  tremen- 
dous and  irregular  power  —  The  Idiot.  With  the 
exception  of  The  Karamazov  Brothers,  this  is  the 
most  peculiarly  characteristic  of  all  Dostoevski's 
works.  It  is  almost  insufferably  long ;  it  reads  as 
though  it  had  never  been  revised;  it  abounds  in 
irrelevancies  and  superfluous  characters.  One  must 
have  an  unshakable  faith  in  the  author  to  read  it 
through,  and  one  should  never  begin  to  read  it 
without  having  acquired  that  faith  through  the 
perusal  of  Crime  and  Punishment.  The  novel  is  a 
combination  of  a  hospital  and  an  insane  asylum ; 
its  pages  are  filled  with  sickly,  diseased,  silly,  and 
crazy  folk.  It  is  largely  autobiographical;  the 
hero's  epileptic  fits  are  described  as  only  an  epileptic 
could  describe  them,  more  convincingly  than  even 
so  able  a  writer  as  Mr.  De  Morgan  diagnoses  them 
in  An  A  fair  of  Dishonour.  Dostoevski  makes  the 
convulsion  come  unexpectedly ;  Mr  De  Morgan 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

uses  the  fit  as  a  kind  of  moral  punctuation  point. 
The  author's  sensations  when  under  condemnation 
of  death  and  expecting  the  immediate  catastrophe 
are  also  minutely  given  from  his  own  never  paling 
recollection.  Then  there  are  allusions  to  Russian 
contemporary  authors,  which  occur,  to  be  sure,  in 
his  other  books.  One  reason  why  Dostoevski  is 
able  to  portray  with  such  detail  the  thoughts  and 
fancies  of  abnormal  persons  is  because  he  was  so 
abnormal  himself;  and  because  his  own  life  had 
been  filled  with  such  an  amazing  variety  of  amaz- 
ing experiences.  Every  single  one  of  his  later 
novels  is  a  footnote  to  actual  circumstance;  with 
any  other  author,  we  should  say,  for  example,  that 
his  accounts  of  the  thoughts  that  pass  in  a  murder- 
er's mind  immediately  before  he  assassinates  his 
victim  were  the  fantastical  emanation  of  a  diseased 
brain,  and  could  never  have  taken  place ;  one  can- 
not do  that  in  Dostoevski's  case,  for  one  is  certain 
that  he  is  drawing  on  his  Siberian  reservoir  of  fact. 
These  novels  are  fully  as  much  a  contribution  to 
the  study  of  abnormal  psychology  as  they  are  to 
the  history  of  fiction. 

The  leading  character,  the  epileptic  Idiot,  has  a 
magnetic  charm  that  pulls  the  reader  from  the 
first,  and  from  which  it  is  vain  to  hope  to  escape. 
The  "lovely  goodness"  that  Stevenson  found  in 
Dostoevski's  Downtrodden  and  Oppressed  shines  in 
158 


DOSTOEVSKI 

this  story  with  a  steady  radiance.  The  most 
brilliant  and  beautiful  women  in  the  novel  fall 
helplessly  in  love  with  the  Idiot,  and  the  men  try 
hard  to  despise  him,  without  the  least  success.  He 
has  the  sincerity  of  a  child,  with  a  child's  innocence 
and  confidence.  His  character  is  almost  the  incar- 
nation of  the  beauty  of  holiness.  Such  common1  and 
universal  sins  as  deceit,  pretence,  revenge,  ambition, 
are  not  only  impossible  to  him,  they  are  even  incon- 
ceivable ;  he  is  without  taint.  From  one  point  of 
view,  he  is  a  natural-born  fool ;  but  the  wisdom  of 
this  world  is  foolishness  with  him.  His  utter  harm- 
lessness  and  incapacity  to  hurt  occasion  scenes  of 
extraordinary  humour,  scenes  that  make  the  reader 
suddenly  laugh  out  loud,  and  love  him  all  the  more 
ardently.  Dostoevski  loved  children  and  animals, 
and  so-called  simple  folk ;  what  is  more,  he  not  only 
loved  them,  he  looked  upon  them  as  his  greatest 
teachers. 

It  is  a  delight  to  hear  this  Idiot  talk :  — 
"What  has  always  surprised  me,  is  the  false  idea 
that  grown-up  people  have  of  children.  They  are 
not  even  understood  by  their  fathers  and  mothers. 
We  ought  to  conceal  nothing  from  children  under 
the  pretext  that  they  are  little  and  that  at  their  age 
they  should  remain  ignorant  of  certain  things. 
What  a  sad  and  unfortunate  idea !  And  how 
clearly  the  children  themselves  perceive  that  their 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

parents  take  them  for  babies  who  can't  understand 
anything,  when  really  they  understand  everything ! 
Great  folks  don't  know  that  in  even  the  most  diffi- 
cult affairs  a  child  is  able  to  give  advice  that  is  of 
the  utmost  importance.  O  God  !  when  this  pretty 
little  bird  stares  at  you  with  a  happy  and  confiding 
look,  you  are  ashamed  to  deceive  him !  I  call 
them  little  birds  because  little  birds  are  the  finest 
things  in  the  world." 

The  Idiot  later  in  the  story  narrates  the  following 
curious  incident.  Two  friends  stopping  together 
at  an  inn  retired  to  their  room  peacefully,  when  one 
of  them,  lusting  to  possess  the  other's  watch,  drew 
a  knife,  sneaked  up  behind  his  victim  stealthily, 
raised  his  eyes  to  heaven,  crossed  himself,  and 
piously  murmured  this  prayer:  "O  Lord,  pardon 
me  through  the  merits  of  Christ ! "  then  stabbed  his 
friend  to  death,  and  quietly  took  the  watch.  Natu- 
rally the  listener  roars  with  laughter,  but  the  Idiot 
quietly  continues  :  "I  once  met  a  peasant  woman 
crossing  herself  so  piously,  so  piously !  '  Why  do 
you  do  that,  my  dear  ? '  said  I  (I  am  always  askLig 
questions).  'Well,'  said  she,  'just  as  a  mother  is 
happy  when  she  sees  the  first  smile  of  her  nursling, 
so  God  experiences  joy  every  time  when,  from  the 
height  of  heaven,  he  sees  a  sinner  lift  toward  Him  a 
fervent  prayer.'  It  was  a  woman  of  the  people  who 
told  me  that,  who  expressed  this  thought  so  pro- 
160 


DOSTOEVSKI 

found,  so  fine,  so  truly  religious,  which  is  the  very 
basis  of  Christianity,  that  is  to  say,  the  idea  that 
God  is  our  father,  that  He  is  delighted  at  the  sight 
of  a  man  as  a  mother  is  at  the  sight  of  her  child,  — 
the  chief  thought  of  Christ!  A  simple  peasant 
woman  !  To  be  sure,  she  was  a  mother.  .  .  .  The 
religious  sentiment,  in  its  essence,  can  never  be 
crushed  by  reasoning,  by  a  sin,  by  a  crime,  by  any 
form  of  atheism;  there  is  something  there  which 
remains  and  always  will  remain  beyond  all  that, 
something  which  the  arguments  of  atheists  will  never 
touch.  But  the  chief  thing  is,  that  nowhere  does 
one  notice  this  more  clearly  than  in  the  heart  of 
Russia.  It  is  one  of  the  most  important  impres- 
sions that  I  first  received  from  our  country." 

The  kindness  of  the  Idiot  toward  his  foes  and 
toward  those  who  are  continually  playing  on  his 
generosity  and  exploiting  him,  enrages  beyond  all 
endurance  some  of  his  friends.  A  beautiful  young 
society  girl  impatiently  cries  :  "There  isn't  a  person 
who  deserves  such  words  from  you  !  here  not  one  of 
them  is  worth  your  little  finger,  not  one  who  has 
your  intelligence  or  your  heart !  You  are  more 
honest  than  all  of  us,  more  noble  than  all,  better 
than  all,  more  clever  than  all !  There  isn't  one  of 
these  people  who  is  fit  to  pick  up  the  handkerchief 
you  let  fall,  so  why  then  do  you  humiliate  yourself 
and  place  yourself  below  everybody !  Why  have 
M  161 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

you  crushed  yourself,  why  haven't  you  any 
pride?" 

She  had  begun  her  acquaintance  with  him  by 
laughing  at  him  and  trying  to  cover  him  with  ridi- 
cule. But  in  his  presence  those  who  come  to  scoff 
remain  to  pray.  Such  men  really  overcome  the 
world. 

He  is  not  the  only  Idiot  in  fiction  who  is  able  to 
teach  the  wise,  as  every  one  knows  who  remembers 
his  David  Copperfield.  How  Betsy  Trotwood  would 
have  loved  Dostoevski's  hero  !  Dickens  and  Dos- 
toevski were  perhaps  the  biggest-hearted  of  all 
novelists,  and  their  respect  for  children  and  harm- 
less men  is  notable.  The  sacredness  of  mad  folk  is 
a  holy  tradition,  not  yet  outworn. 

The  Eternal  Husband  is  a  story  dealing,  of  course, 
with  an  abnormal  character,  in  abnormal  circum- 
stances. It  is  a  quite  original  variation  on  the 
triangle  theme.  It  has  genuine  humour,  and  the 
conclusion  leaves  one  in  a  muse.  The  Hobbledehoy, 
translated  into  French  as  Un  Adolescent,  is,  on  the 
whole,  Dostoevski's  worst  novel,  which  is  curious 
enough,  coming  at  a  time  when  he  was  doing  some  of 
his  best  work.  He  wrote  this  while  his  mind  was 
busy  with  a  great  masterpiece,  The  Karamazov 
Brothers,  and  in  this  book  we  get  nothing  but  the 
lees.  It  is  a  novel  of  portentous  length  and  utter 
vacuity.  I  have  read  many  dull  books,  but  it  is 
162 


DOSTOEVSKI . 

hard  to  recall  a  novel  where  the  steady,  monotonous 
dulness  of  page  after  page  is  quite  so  oppressive. 
For  it  is  not  only  dull ;  it  is  stupid. 

Dostoevski's  last  work,  The  Karamazov  Brothers, 
was  the  result  of  ten  years'  reflection,  study,  and 
labour,  and  he  died  without  completing  it.  It  is  a 
very  long  novel  as  it  stands ;  had  he  lived  five  years 
more,  it  would  probably  have  been  the  longest 
novel  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  for  he  seems  to  have 
regarded  what  he  left  as  an  introduction.  Even  as 
it  is,  it  is  too  long,  and  could  profitably  be  cut  down 
one-third.  It  is  incomplete,  it  is  badly  constructed, 
it  is  very  badly  written ;  but  if  I  could  have  only 
one  of  his  novels,  I  would  take  The  Karamazov 
Brothers.  For  Dostoevski  put  into  it  all  the  sum 
of  his  wisdom,  all  the  ripe  fruit  of  his  experience, 
all  his  religious  aspiration,  and  in  Alosha  he  created 
not  only  the  greatest  of  all  his  characters,  but  his 
personal  conception  of  what  the  ideal  man  should 
be.  Alosha  is  the  Idiot,  minus  idiocy  and  epilepsy. 

The  women  in  this  book  are  not  nearly  so  well 
drawn  as  the  men.  I  cannot  even  tell  them  apart, 
so  it  would  be  a  waste  of  labour  to  write  further 
about  them.  But  the  four  men  who  make  up  the 
Karamazov  family,  the  father  and  the  three  sons, 
are  one  of  the  greatest  family  parties  in  the  history 
of  fiction.  Then  the  idiotic  and  epileptic  Smerda- 
kov  —  for  Dostoevski  must  have  his  idiot  and  his 
163 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

fits,  and  they  make  an  effective  combination  — • 
is  an  absolutely  original  character  out  of  whose 
mouth  come  from  time  to  time  the  words  of  truth 
and  soberness.  The  old  monk  at  the  head  of  the 
chapter  is  marvellous;  he  would  find  a  natural 
place  in  one  of  Ibsen's  early  historical  dramas,  for 
he  is  a  colossal  pontifical  figure,  and  has  about  him 
the  ancient  air  of  authority.  If  one  really  doubted 
the  genius  of  Dostoevski,  one  would  merely  need  to 
contemplate  the  men  in  this  extraordinary  story, 
and  listen  to  their  talk.  Then  if  any  one  continued 
to  doubt  Dostoevski's  greatness  as  a  novelist,  he 
could  no  longer  doubt  his  greatness  as  a  man. 

The  criminal  psychology  of  this  novel  and  the 
scenes  at  the  trial  are  more  interesting  than  those 
in  Crime  and  Punishment,  for  the  prisoner  is  a  much 
more  interesting  man  than  Raskolnikov,  and  by  an 
exceedingly  clever  trick  the  reader  is  completely 
deceived.  The  discovery  of  the  murder  is  as  harsh 
a  piece  of  realism  as  the  most  difficult  realist  could 
desire.  The  corpse  lies  on  its  back  on  the  floor,  its 
silk  nightgown  covered  with  blood.  The  faithful 
old  servant,  smitten  down  and  bleeding  copiously, 
is  faintly  crying  for  help.  Close  at  hand  is  the  epi- 
leptic, in  the  midst  of  a  fearful  convulsion.  There 
are  some  dramatic  moments  ! 

But  the  story,  as  nearly  always  in  Dostoevski,  is  a 
mere  easel  for  the  portraits.  From  the  loins  of  the 
164 


DOSTOEVSKI 

father  —  a  man  of  tremendous  force  of  character, 
all  turned  hell  ward,  for  he  is  a  selfish,  sensual  beast 
—  proceed  three  sons,  men  of  powerful  individuali- 
ties, bound  together  by  fraternal  affection.  Mitia 
is  in  many  respects  like  his  father,  but  it  is  wonder- 
ful how  we  love  him  in  the  closing  scenes ;  Ivan  is 
the  sceptic,  whose  final  conviction  that  he  is  mor- 
ally responsible  for  his  father's  murder  shows  his 
inability  to  escape  from  the  domination  of  moral 
ideas ;  Alosha,  the  priestly  third  brother,  has  all  the 
family  force  of  character,  but  in  him  it  finds  its  only 
outlet  in  love  to  God  and  love  to  man.  He  has  a 
remarkably  subtle  mind,  but  he  is  as  innocent,  as 
harmless,  as  sincere,  and  as  pure  in  heart  as  a  little 
child.  He  invariably  returns  for  injury,  not  par- 
don, but  active  kindness.  No  one  can  be  offended 
in  him  for  long,  and  his  cheerful  conversation  and 
beautiful,  upright  life  are  a  living  witness  to  his 
religious  faith,  known  and  read  of  all  men.  Angry, 
sneering,  and  selfish  folk  come  to  regard  him  with  an 
affection  akin  to  holy  awe.  But  he  is  not  in  the 
least  a  prig  or  a  stuffed  curiosity.  He  is  essentially 
a  reasonable,  kind-hearted  man,  who  goes  about 
doing  good.  Every  one  confides  in  him,  all  go  to 
him  for  advice  and  solace.  He  is  a  multitudinous 
blessing,  with  masculine  virility  and  shrewd  insight, 
along  with  the  sensitiveness  and  tenderness  of  a 
good  woman.  Seeing  six  boys  attacking  one,  he 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

attempts  to  rescue  the  solitary  fighter,  when  to  his 
surprise  the  gamin  turns  on  him,  insults  him,  strikes 
him  with  a  stone,  and  bites  him.  Alosha,  wrapping 
up  his  injured  hand,  after  one  involuntary  scream 
of  pain,  looks  affectionately  at  the  young  scoundrel, 
and  quietly  asks,  "Tell  me,  what  have  I  done  to 
you?"  The  boy  looks  at  him  in  amazement. 
Alosha  continues  :  "I  don't  know  you,  but  of  course 
I  must  have  injured  you  in  some  way  since  you  treat 
me  so.  Tell  me  exactly  where  I  have  been  wrong." 
The  child  bursts  into  tears,  and  what  no  violence  of 
punishment  has  been  able  to  accomplish,  Alosha's 
kindness  has  done  in  a  few  moments.  Here  is  a 
boy  who  would  gladly  die  for  him. 

The  conversations  in  this  book  have  often  quite 
unexpected  turns  of  humour,  and  are  filled  with 
oversubtle  questions  of  casuistry  and  curious  reason- 
ings. From  one  point  of  view  the  novel  is  a  huge, 
commonplace  book,  into  which  Dostoevski  put 
all  sorts  of  whimsies,  queries,  and  vagaries.  Smer- 
dakov,  the  epileptic,  is  a  thorn  in  the  side  of  those 
who  endeavour  to  instruct  him,  for  he  asks  questions 
and  raises  unforeseen  difficulties  that  perplex  those 
who  regard  themselves  as  his  superiors.  No  one 
but  Dostoevski  would  ever  have  conceived  of  such  a 
character,  or  have  imagined  such  ideas. 

If  one  reads  Poor  Folk,  Crime  and  Punishment, 
Memoirs  of  the  House  of  the  Dead,  The  Idiot,  and 
166 


DOSTOEVSKI 

The  Karamazov  Brothers,  one  will  have  a  complete 
idea  of  Dostoevski's  genius  and  of  his  faults  as  a 
writer,  and  will  see  clearly  his  attitude  toward  life. 
In  his  story  called  Devils  one  may  learn  something 
about  his  political  opinions ;  but  these  are  of  slight 
interest;  for  a  man's  opinions  on  politics  are  his 
views  on  something  of  temporary  and  transient 
importance,  and  like  a  railway  time-table,  they  are 
subject  to  change  without  notice.  But  the  ideas  of 
a  great  man  on  Religion,  Humanity,  and  Art  take 
hold  on  something  eternal,  and  sometimes  borrow 
eternity  from  the  object. 

No  doubt  Dostoevski  realised  the  sad  inequalities 
of  his  work,  and  the  great  blunders  due  to  haste  in 
composition.  He  wrote  side  by  side  with  Turgenev 
and  Tolstoi,  and  could  not  escape  the  annual  com- 
parison in  production.  Indeed,  he  was  always 
measuring  himself  with  these  two  men,  and  they 
were  never  long  out  of  his  mind.  Nor  was  his  soul 
without  bitterness  when  he  reflected  on  their  for- 
tunate circumstances  which  enabled  them  to  write, 
correct,  and  polish  at  leisure,  and  give  to  the  public 
only  the  last  refinement  of  their  work.  In  the  novel 
Downtrodden  and  Oppressed  Natasha  asks  the  young 
writer  if  he  has  finished  his  composition.  On  being 
told  that  it  is  all  done,  she  says:  "God  be  praised  ! 
But  haven't  you  hurried  it  too  much?  Haven't 
you  spoiled  anything?"  "Oh,  I  don't  think  so," 
167 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

he  replied;  "when  I  have  a  work  that  demands  a 
particular  tension  of  the  mind,  I  am  in  a  state  of 
extraordinary  nervous  excitement;  images  are 
clearer,  my  senses  are  more  alert,  and  for  the  form, 
why,  the  style  is  plastic,  and  steadily  becomes 
better  in  proportion  as  the  tension  becomes 
stronger."  She  sighed,  and  added:  "You  are  ex- 
hausting yourself  and  you  will  ruin  your  health. 
Just  look  at  S.  He  spent  two  years  in  writing  one 
short  story ;  but  how  he  has  worked  at  it  and  chis- 
elled it  down  !  not  the  least  thing  to  revise;  no  one 
can  detect  a  blemish."  To  this  stricture  the  poor 
fellow  rejoined,  "Ah,  but  those  fellows  have  their 
income  assured,  they  are  never  compelled  to  publish 
at  a  fixed  date,  while  I,  why,  I  am  only  a  cab- 
horse!" 

Although  Dostoevski's  sins  against  art  were 
black  and  many,  it  was  a  supreme  compliment  to 
the  Novel  as  an  art-form  that  such  a  man  should 
have  chosen  it  as  the  channel  of  his  ideas.  For  he 
was  certainly  one  of  the  most  profound  thinkers  of 
modern  times.  His  thought  dives  below  and  soars 
above  the  regions  where  even  notable  philosophers 
live  out  their  intellectual  lives.  He  never  dodged 
the  ugly  facts  in  the  world,  nor  even  winced  before 
them.  Nor  did  he  defy  them.  The  vast  knowledge 
that  he  had  of  the  very  worst  of  life's  conditions, 
and  of  the  extreme  limits  of  sin  of  which  humanity  is 
1 68 


DOSTOEVSKI 

capable,  seemed  only  to  deepen  and  strengthen  his 
love  of  this  world,  his  love  of  all  the  creatures  on  it, 
and  his  intense  religious  passion.  For  the  religion 
of  Dostoevski  is  thrilling  in  its  clairvoyance  and  in 
its  fervour.  That  so  experienced  and  unprejudiced 
a  man,  gifted  with  such  a  power  of  subtle  and  pro- 
found reflection,  should  have  found  in  the  Chris- 
tian religion  the  only  solution  of  the  riddle  of 
existence,  and  the  best  rule  for  daily  conduct,  is  hi 
itself  valuable  evidence  that  the  Christian  religion 
is  true. 

Dostoevski  has  been  surpassed  in  many  things  by 
other  novelists.  The  deficiencies  and  the  excres- 
cences of  his  art  are  glaring.  But  of  all  the  masters 
of  fiction,  both  in  Russia  and  elsewhere,  he  is  the 
most  truly  spiritual. 


169 


TOLSTOI 

ON  the  6  September  1852,  signed  only  with 
initials,  appeared  in  a  Russian  periodical  the  first 
work  of  Count  Leo  Tolstoi— -Childhood.  By  1867, 
his  name  was  just  barely  known  outside  of  Russia, 
for  in  that  year  the  American  diplomat,  Eugene 
Schuyler,  in  the  preface  to  his  translation  of  Fa- 
thers and  Sons,  said,  "The  success  of  Gogol  brought 
out  a  large  number  of  romance-writers,  who  aban- 
doned all  imitation  of  German,  French,  and  Eng- 
lish novelists,  and  have  founded  a  truly  national 
school  of  romance."  Besides  Turgenev,  "easily 
their  chief,"  he  mentioned  five  Russian  writers, 
all  but  one  of  whom  are  now  unknown  or  forgotten 
in  America.  The  second  in  his  list  was  "the 
Count  Tolstoi,  a  writer  chiefly  of  military  novels." 
During  the  seventies,  the  English  scholar  Ralston 
published  in  a  review  some  paraphrases  of  Tolstoi, 
because,  as  he  said,  "Tolstoi  will  probably  never  be 
translated  into  English."  To-day  the  works  of 
Tolstoi  are  translated  into  forty-five  languages, 
and  in  the  original  Russian  the  sales  have  gone  into 
many  millions.  During  the  last  ten  years  of  his 
life  he  held  an  absolutely  unchallenged  position  as 
170 


TOLSTOI 

the  greatest  living  writer  in  the  world,  there  being 
not  a  single  contemporary  worthy  to  be  named  in 
the  same  breath. 

Tolstoi  himself,  at  the  end  of  the  century,  divided 
his  life  into  four  periods : 1  the  innocent,  joyous,  and 
poetic  time  of  childhood,  from  earliest  recollection 
up  to  the  age  of  fourteen;  the  "terrible  twenties," 
full  of  ambition,  vanity,  and  licentiousness,  lasting 
till  his  marriage  at  the  age  of  thirty-four ;  the  third 
period  of  eighteen  years,  when  he  was  honest  and 
pure  in  family  life,  but  a  thorough  egoist;  the 
fourth  period,  which  he  hoped  would  be  the  last, 
dating  from  his  Christian  conversion,  and  during 
which  he  tried  to  shape  his  life  in  accordance  with 
the  Sermon  on  the  Mount. 

He  was  born  at  Yasnaya  Polyana,  in  south  central 
Russia,  not  far  from  the  birthplace  of  Turgenev, 
on  the  28  August  1828.  His  mother  died  when 
he  was  a  baby,  his  father  when  he  was  only  nine. 
An  aunt,  to  whom  he  was  devotedly  attached, 
and  whom  he  called  "  Grandmother,"  had  the  main 
supervision  of  his  education.  In  1836  the  family 
went  to  live  at  Moscow,  where  the  boy  formed 
that  habit  of  omnivorous  reading  which  charac- 
terised his  whole  life.  Up  to  his  fourteenth  year, 
the  books  that  chiefly  influenced  him  were  the  Old 

1  His  own  Memoirs,  edited  by  Birukov,  are  now  the  authority 
for  biographical  detail.    They  are  still  in  process  of  publication. 
171 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

Testament,  the  Arabian  Nights,  Pushkin,  and 
popular  Russian  legends.  It  was  intended  that 
he  should  follow  a  diplomatic  career,  and  in  prep- 
aration for  the  University  of  Kazan,  he  studied 
Oriental  languages.  In  1844  he  failed  to  pass  his 
entrance  examinations,  but  was  admitted  some 
months  later.  He  left  the  University  in  1847. 
From  his  fourteenth  to  his  twenty-first  year  the 
books  that  he  read  with  the  most  profit  were  Sterne's 
Sentimental  Journey,  under  the  influence  of  which 
he  wrote  his  first  story,  Pushkin,  Schiller's  Robbers, 
Lermontov,  Gogol,  Turgenev's  A  Sportsman's 
Sketches;  and  to  a  less  degree  he  was  affected  by 
the  New  Testament,  Rousseau,  Dickens's  David 
Copperfield,  and  the  historical  works  of  the  Ameri- 
can Prescott.  Like  all  Russian  boys,  he  of  course 
read  the  romances  of  Fenimore  Cooper. 

On  leaving  the  University,  he  meant  to  take  up 
a  permanent  residence  in  the  country;  but  this 
enthusiasm  waned  at  the  close  of  the  summer,  as 
it  does  with  nearly  everybody,  and  he  went  to  St. 
Petersburg  in  the  autumn  of  1847,  where  he  entered 
the  University  in  the  department  of  law.  During 
all  this  time  he  had  the  habit  of  almost  morbid  intro- 
spection, and  like  so  many  young  people,  he  wrote 
resolutions  and  kept  a  diary.  In  1851  he  went 
with  his  brother  to  the  Caucasus,  and  entered  the 
military  service,  as  described  in  his  novel,  The 
172 


TOLSTOI 

Cossacks.  Here  he  indulged  in  dissipation,  cards, 
and  women,  like  the  other  soldiers.  In  the  midst 
of  his  life  there  he  wrote  to  his  aunt,  in  French, 
the  language  of  most  of  their  correspondence,  "You 
recall  some  advice  you  once  gave  me  —  to  write 
novels :  well,  I  am  of  your  opinion,  and  I  am  doing 
literary  work.  I  do  not  know  whether  what  I 
write  will  ever  appear  in  the  world,  but  it  is  work 
that  amuses  me,  and  in  which  I  have  persevered  for 
too  long  a  time  to  give  it  up."  He  noted  at  this 
time  that  the  three  passions  which  obstructed  the 
moral  way  were  gambling,  sensuality,  and  vanity. 
And  he  further  wrote  in  his  journal,  "There  is 
something  in  me  which  makes  me  think  that  I  was 
not  born  to  be  just  like  everybody  else."  Again : 
"The  man  who  has  no  other  goal  than  his  own 
happiness  is  a  bad  man.  He  whose  goal  is  the  good 
opinion  of  others  is  a  weak  man.  He  whose  goal 
is  the  happiness  of  others  is  a  virtuous  man.  He 
whose  goal  is  God  is  a  great  man ! " 

He  finished  his  first  novel,  Childhood,  sent  it  to  a 
Russian  review,  and  experienced  the  most  naive 
delight  when  the  letter  of  acceptance  arrived.  "It 
made  me  happy  to  the  limit  of  stupidity,"  he  wrote 
in  his  diary.  The  letter  was  indeed  flattering. 
The  publisher  recognised  the  young  author's  talent, 
and  was  impressed  with  his  "simplicity  and  reality," 
as  well  he  might  be,  for  they  became  the  cardinal 
i73 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

qualities  of  all  Tolstoi's  books.  It  attracted  little 
attention,  however,  and  no  criticism  of  it  appeared 
for  two  years.  But  a  little  later,  when  Dostoevski 
obtained  in  Siberia  the  two  numbers  of  the  peri- 
odical containing  Childhood  and  Boyhood,  he  was 
deeply  moved,  and  wrote  to  a  friend,  asking,  Who 
is  this  mysterious  L.  N.  T.  ?  But  for  a  long  time 
Tolstoi  refused  to  let  his  name  be  known. 

Tolstoi  took  part  in  the  Crimean  war,  not  as  a 
spectator  or  reporter,  but  as  an  officer.  He  was 
repeatedly  in  imminent  danger,  and  saw  all  the 
horrors  of  warfare,  as  described  in  Sevastopol. 
Still,  he  found  time  somehow  for  literary  work, 
wrote  Boyhood,  and  read  Dickens  hi  English. 
About  this  time  he  decided  to  substitute  the  Lord's 
Prayer  in  his  private  devotions  for  all  other  peti- 
tions, saying  that  "Thy  will  be  done  on  earth  as 
it  is  in  Heaven"  included  everything.  On  the 
5  March  1855  he  wrote  in  his  diary  a  curious 
prophecy  of  his  present  attitude  toward  religion  : 
"My  conversations  on  divinity  and  faith  have  led 
me  to  a  great  idea,  for  the  realisation  of  which  I  am 
ready  to  devote  my  whole  life.  This  idea  is  the 
founding  of  a  new  religion,  corresponding  to  the 
level  of  human  development,  the  religion  of  Christ, 
but  purified  of  all  dogmas  and  mysteries,  a  practi- 
cal religion  not  promising  a  blessed  future  life,  but 
bestowing  happiness  here  on  earth." 


TOLSTOI 

In  this  same  year  he  wrote  the  book  which  was 
the  first  absolute  proof  of  his  genius,  and  with 
the  publication  of  which  his  reputation  began  — 
Sevastopol  in  December.  This  was  printed  in  the 
same  review  that  had  accepted  his  first  work,  was 
greeted  with  enthusiasm  by  Turgenev  and  the 
literary  circles  at  Petersburg,  was  read  by  the 
Tsar,  and  translated  into  French  at  the  imperial 
command.  It  was  followed  by  Sevastopol  in  May 
and  Sevastopol  in  August,  and  Tolstoi  found  him- 
self famous. 

It  was  evident  that  a  man  so  absorbed  in  religious 
ideas  and  so  sensitive  to  the  hideous  wholesale 
murder  of  war,  could  not  remain  for  long  in  the 
army.  He  arrived  at  Petersburg  on  the  21  Novem- 
ber 1855,  and  had  a  warm  reception  from  the 
distinguished  group  of  writers  who  were  at  that 
time  contributors  to  the  Sovremennik  l  (The  Con- 
temporary Review),  which  had  published  Tolstoi's 
work.  This  review  had  been  founded  by  Pushkin 
in  1836,  was  now  edited  by  Nekrassov,  who  had 
accepted  Tolstoi's  first  article,  Childhood,  and  had 
enlisted  the  foremost  writers  of  Russia,  prom- 
inent among  whom  was,  of  course,  Turgenev.  The 
books  which  Tolstoi  read  with  the  most  profit 

1  An  amusing  caricature  of  the  time  represents  Turgenev, 
Ovstrovski,  and  Tolstoi  bringing  rolls  of  manuscripts  to  the 
editors. 

175 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

during  this  period  were  Goethe,  Hugo's  Notre- 
Dame,  Plato  in  French,  and  Homer  in  Russian. 

Turgenev  had  a  fixed  faith  in  the  future  of 
Tolstoi ;  he  was  already  certain  that  a  great  writer 
had  appeared  in  Russia.  Writing  to  a  friend  from 
Paris,  in  1856,  he  said,  "When  this  new  wine  is 
ripened  there  will  be  a  drink  fit  for  the  gods." 
In  1857,  after  Tolstoi  had  visited  him  in  Paris, 
Turgenev  wrote,  "This  man  will  go  far  and  will 
leave  behind  him  a  profound  influence."  But  the 
two  authors  had  little  in  common,  and  it  was  evident 
that  there  could  never  be  perfect  harmony  between 
them.  Explaining  why  he  could  not  feel  wholly 
at  ease  with  Tolstoi,  he  said,  "We  are  made  of  dif- 
ferent clay." 

In  January  1857,  Tolstoi  left  Moscow  for  Warsaw 
by  sledge,  and  from  there  travelled  by  rail  for  Paris. 
In  March,  accompanied  by  Turgenev,  he  went  to 
Dijon,  and  saw  a  man  executed  by  the  guillotine. 
He  was  deeply  impressed  both  by  the  horror  and 
by  the  absurdity  of  capital  punishment,  and,  as  he 
said,  the  affair  "pursued"  him  for  a  long  time. 
He  travelled  on  through  Switzerland,  and  at 
Lucerne  he  felt  the  contrast  between  the  great 
natural  beauty  of  the  scenery  and  the  artificiality 
of  the  English  snobs  in  the  hotel.  He  journeyed 
on  down  the  Rhine,  and  returned  to  Russia  from 
Berlin.  During  all  these  months  of  travel,  his 
176 


TOLSTOI 

journal  expresses  the  constant  religious  fermentation 
of  his  mind,  and  his  intense  democratic  sentiments. 
They  were  the  same  ideas  held  by  the  Tolstoi  of  1900. 

On  the  3  July  1860,  he  left  Petersburg  by  steamer, 
once  more  to  visit  southern  Europe.  He  visited 
schools,  universities,  and  studied  the  German 
methods  of  education.  He  also  spent  some  time 
in  the  south  of  France,  and  wrote  part  of  The  Cos- 
sacks there.  In  Paris  he  once  more  visited  Tur- 
genev,  and  then  crossed  over  to  London,  where 
he  saw  the  great  Russian  critic  Herzen  almost  every 
day.  Herzen  was  not  at  all  impressed  by  Tolstoi's 
philosophical  views,  thinking  them  both  weak  and 
vague.  The  little  daughter  of  Herzen  begged  her 
father  for  the  privilege  of  meeting  the  young  and 
famous  author.  She  expected  to  see  a  philosopher, 
who  would  speak  of  weighty  matters:  what  was 
her  disappointment  when  Count  Tolstoi  appeared, 
dressed  hi  the  latest  English  style,  looking  exactly 
like  a  fashionable  man  of  the  world,  and  talking 
with  great  enthusiasm  of  a  cock-fight  he  had  just 
witnessed ! 

After  nine  months'  absence,  Tolstoi  returned  to 
Russia  in  April  1861.  He  soon  went  to  his  home 
at  Yasnaya  Polyana,  established  a  school  for  the 
peasants,  and  devoted  himself  to  the  arduous 
labour  of  their  education.  Here  he  had  a  chance 
to  put  into  practice  all  the  theories  that  he  had 
N  177 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

acquired  from  his  observations  in  Germany  and 
England.  He  worked  so  hard  that  he  injured  his 
health,  and  in  a  few  months  was  forced  to  travel 
and  rest.  In  this  same  year  he  lost  a  thousand 
rubles  playing  billiards  with  Katkov,  the  well- 
known  editor  of  the  Russian  Messenger.  Not  being 
able  to  pay  cash,  he  gave  Katkov  the  manuscript 
of  his  novel,  The  Cossacks,  which  was  accordingly 
printed  in  the  review  in  January  1863. 

On  the  23  September  1862,  he  was  married.  A 
short  time  before  this  event  he  gave  his  fiancee  his 
diary,  which  contained  a  frank  and  free  account  of 
all  the  sins  of  his  bachelor  life.  She  was  over- 
whelmed, and  thought  of  breaking  off  the  engage- 
ment. After  many  nights  spent  in  wakeful  weep- 
ing, she  returned  the  journal  to  him,  with  a  full 
pardon,  and  assurance  of  complete  affection.  It 
was  fortunate  for  him  that  this  young  girl  was 
large-hearted  enough  to  forgive  his  sins,  for  she  be- 
came an  ideal  wife,  and  shared  in  all  his  work,  copy- 
ing in  her  own  hand  his  manuscripts  again  and 
again.  In  all  her  relations  with  the  difficult 
temperament  of  her  husband,  she  exhibited  the 
utmost  devotion,  and  that  uncommon  quality 
which  we  call  common  sense. 

Shortly  after  the  marriage,  Tolstoi  began  the 
composition  of  a  leviathan  in  historical  fiction, 
War  and  Peace.  While  composing  it,  he  wrote: 
178 


TOLSTOI 

"If  one  could  only  accomplish  the  hundredth  part 
of  what  one  conceives,  but  one  cannot  even  do 
a  millionth  part !  Still,  the  consciousness  of  Power 
is  what  brings  happiness  to  a  literary  man.  I  have 
felt  this  power  particularly  during  this  year." 
He  suffered,  however,  from  many  paroxysms  of 
despair,  and  constantly  corrected  what  he  wrote. 
This  made  it  necessary  for  his  wife  to  copy  out  the 
manuscript;  and  it  is  said  that  she  wrote  in  her 
own  hand  the  whole  manuscript  of  this  enormous 
work  seven  times ! 

The  publication  of  the  novel  began  in  the  Russki 
Viestnik  (Russian  Messenger)  for  January  1865, 
and  the  final  chapters  did  not  appear  till  1869. 
It  attracted  constant  attention  during  the  process 
of  publication,  and  despite  considerable  hostile 
criticism,  established  the  reputation  of  its  author. 

During  its  composition  Tolstoi  read  all  kinds  of 
books,  Pickwick  Papers,  Anthony  Trollope,  whom 
he  greatly  admired,  and  Schopenhauer,  who  for 
a  time  fascinated  him.  In  1869  he  learned  Greek, 
and  was  proud  of  being  able  to  read  the  Anabasis 
in  a  few  months.  He  interested  himself  in  social 
problems,  and  fought  hard  with  the  authorities 
to  save  a  man  from  capital  punishment.  To 
various  schemes  of  education,  and  to  the  general 
amelioration  of  the  condition  of  the  peasants,  he 
gave  all  the  tremendous  energy  of  his  mind. 
179 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

On  the  19  March  1873,  he  began  the  composition 
of  Anna  Karenina,  which  was  to  give  him  his  great- 
est fame  outside  of  Russia.  Several  years  were 
spent  in  its  composition  and  publication.  Despite 
the  power  of  genius  displayed  in  this  masterpiece, 
he  did  not  enjoy  writing  it,  and  seemed  to  be  un- 
aware of  its  splendid  qualities.  In  1875  he  wrote, 
"For  two  months  I  have  not  soiled  my  ringers  with 
ink,  but  now  I  return  again  to  this  tiresome  and 
vulgar  Anna  Karenina,  with  the  sole  wish  of  getting 
it  done  as  soon  as  possible,  in  order  that  I  may 
have  time  for  other  work."  It  was  published  in 
the  Russian  Messenger,  and  the  separate  numbers 
drew  the  attention  of  critics  everywhere,  not  merely 
in  Russia,  but  all  over  Europe. 

The  printing  began  in  1874.  All  went  well 
enough  for  two  years,  as  we  see  by  a  letter  of  the 
Countess  Tolstoi,  in  December  1876.  "At  last 
we  are  writing  Anna  Karenina  comme  il  faut,  that 
is,  without  interruptions.  Leo,  full  of  animation, 
writes  an  entire  chapter  every  day,  and  I  copy  it 
off  as  fast  as  possible  ;  even  now,  under  this  letter, 
there  are  the  pages  of  the  new  chapter  that  he  wrote 
yesterday.  Katkov  telegraphed  day  before  yester- 
day to  send  some  chapters  for  the  December  num- 
ber." But,  just  before  the  completion  of  the  work, 
Tolstoi  and  the  editor,  Katkov,  had  an  irreconcil- 
able quarrel.  The  war  with  Turkey  was  imminent. 
1 80 


TOLSTOI 

Tolstoi  was  naturally  vehemently  opposed  to  it, 
while  Katkov  did  everything  in  his  power  to  in- 
flame public  opinion  in  favour  of  the  war  party; 
and  he  felt  that  Vronsky's  departure  for  the  war, 
after  the  death  of  Anna,  with  Levin's  comments 
thereupon,  were  written  in  an  unpatriotic  manner. 
Ridiculous  as  it  now  seems  to  give  this  great  master- 
piece a  political  twist,  or  to  judge  it  from  that  point 
of  view,  it  was  for  a  time  the  sole  question  that 
agitated  the  critics.  Katkov  insisted  that  Tolstoi 
"soften "  the  objectionable  passages.  Tolstoi  natu- 
rally refused,  editor  and  author  quarrelled,  and 
Tolstoi  was  forced  to  publish  the  last  portion  of 
the  work  in  a  separate  pamphlet.  In  the  num- 
ber of  May  1877,  Katkov  printed  a  footnote  to  the 
instalment  of  the  novel,  which  shows  how  little 
he  understood  its  significance,  although  the  ma- 
jority of  contemporary  Russian  critics  understood 
the  book  no  better  than  he. 

"  In  our  last  number,  at  the  foot  of  the  novel 
Anna  Karenina,  we  printed,  'Conclusion  in  the 
next  issue.'  But  with  the  death  of  the  heroine 
the  real  story  ends.  According  to  the  plan  of  the 
author,  there  will  be  a  short  epilogue,  in  which  the 
reader  will  learn  that  Vronsky,  overwhelmed  by 
the  death  of  Anna,  will  depart  for  Servia  as  a 
volunteer  ;  that  all  the  other  characters  remain 
alive  and  well ;  that  Levin  lives  on  his  estates  and 
181 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

fumes  against  the  Slavonic  party  and  the  volun- 
teers. Perhaps  the  author  will  develop  this  chap- 
ter in  a  special  edition  of  his  novel." 

Levin's  conversation  with  the  peasant,  toward 
the  close  of  Anna  Karenina,  indicates  clearly 
the  religious  attitude  of  Tolstoi,  and  prepares 
us  for  the  crisis  that  followed.  From  1877  to 
1879  he  passed  through  a  spiritual  struggle, 
read  the  New  Testament  constantly,  and  became 
completely  converted  to  the  practical  teachings 
of  the  Gospel.  Then  followed  his  well-known 
work,  My  Religion,  the  abandonment  of  his 
former  way  of  life,  and  his  attempts  to  live  like  a 
peasant,  in  daily  manual  labour.  Since  that  time 
he  wrote  a  vast  number  of  religious,  political,  and 
social  tracts,  dealing  with  war,  marriage,  law- 
courts,  imprisonment,  etc.  Many  of  the  religious 
tracts  belong  to  literature  by  the  beauty  and 
simple  directness  of  their  style.  Two  short  stories 
and  one  long  novel,  all  written  with  a  didactic 
purpose,  are  of  this  period,  and  added  to  their 
author's  reputation:  The  Death  of  Ivan  Ilyich, 
The  Kreuzer  Sonata,  and  Resurrection. 

One  cannot  help  admire  the  courage  of  Tolstoi  in 
attempting  to  live  in  accordance  with  his  convic- 
tions, just  as  we  admire  Milton  for  his  motives  in 
abandoning  poetry  for  politics.  But  our  unspeak- 
able regret  at  the  loss  to  the  world  in  both  instances, 
182 


TOLSTOI 

when  its  greatest  living  author  devotes  himself  to 
things  done  much  better  by  men  destitute  of 
talent,  makes  us  heartily  sympathise  with  the  atti- 
tude of  the  Countess,  who  hardly  knew  whether 
to  laugh  or  to  cry.  In  a  letter  to  her  husband, 
written  hi  October  1884,  and  filled  with  terms 
of  affectionate  tenderness,  she  said:  "Yesterday 
I  received  your  letter,  and  it  has  made  me  very 
sad.  I  see  that  you  have  remained  at  Yasnaya  not 
for  intellectual  work,  which  I  place  above  every- 
thing, but  to  play  '  Robinson.'  You  have  let  the 
cook  go  ...  and  from  morning  to  night  you 
give  yourself  up  to  manual  toil  fit  only  for  young 
men.  .  .  .  You  will  say,  of  course,  that  this  manner 
of  life  conforms  to  your  principles  and  that  it  does 
you  good.  That's  another  matter.  I  can  only 
say,  '  Rejoice  and  take  your  pleasure, '  and  at  the 
same  time  I  feel  sad  to  think  that  such  an  intel- 
lectual force  as  yours  should  expend  itself  in  cutting 
wood,  heating  the  samovar,  and  sewing  boots. 
That  is  all  very  well  as  a  change  of  work,  but  not 
for  an  occupation.  Well,  enough  of  this  subject. 
If  I  had  not  written  this,  it  would  have  rankled  in 
me,  and  now  it  has  passed  and  I  feel  like  laughing. 
I  can  calm  myself  only  by  this  Russian  proverb : 
'Let  the  child  amuse  himself,  no  matter  how,  pro- 
vided he  doesn't  cry.'" 

In  the  last  few  weeks  of  his  life,  the  differences 
183 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

of  opinion  between  the  aged  couple  became  so 
acute  that  Tolstoi  fled  from  his  home,  and  re- 
fused to  see  the  Countess  again.  This  flight 
brought  on  a  sudden  illness,  and  the  great  writer 
died  early  in  the  morning  of  the  20  November 
1910.  He  was  buried  under  an  oak  tree  at 
Yasnaya  Polyana. 

Although  Count  Tolstoi  divided  his  life  into 
four  distinct  periods,  and  although  critics  have 
often  insisted  on  the  great  difference  between  his 
earlier  and  his  later  work,  these  differences  fade 
away  on  a  close  scrutiny  of  the  man's  whole  pro- 
duction, from  Childhood  to  Resurrection. 

"Souls  alter  not,  and  mine  must  still  advance," 
said  Browning.  This  is  particularly  true  of  Tolstoi. 
He  progressed,  but  did  not  change;  and  he 
progressed  along  the  path  already  clearly  marked 
in  his  first  books.  The  author  of  Sevastopol  and 
The  Cossacks  was  the  same  man  mentally  and 
spiritually  who  wrote  Anna  Karenina,  Ivan  Ilyich, 
The  Kreuzer  Sonata,  and  Resurrection.  Indeed, 
few  great  authors  have  steered  so  straight  a  course 
as  he.  No  such  change  took  place  in  him  as  oc- 
curred with  Bjb'rnson.  The  teaching  of  the  later 
books  is  more  evident,  the  didactic  purpose  is 
more  obvious,  but  that  is  something  that  happens 
to  almost  all  writers  as  they  descend  into  the 
vale  of  years.  The  seed  planted  in  the  early 
184 


TOLSTOI 

novels  simply  came  to  a  perfectly  natural  and 
logical  fruition. 

Not  only  do  the  early  novels  indicate  the  direc- 
tion that  Tolstoi's  whole  life  was  bound  to  as- 
sume, but  his  diary  and  letters  show  the  same 
thing.  The  extracts  from  these  that  I  have  given 
above  are  substantial  proof  of  this  —  he  saw  the 
truth  just  as  clearly  in  1855  as  he  saw  it  in  1885, 
or  in  1905.  The  difference  between  the  early  and 
later  Tolstoi  is  not,  then,  a  difference  in  mental 
viewpoint,  it  is  a  difference  in  conduct  and  action.1 
The  eternal  moral  law  of  self-sacrifice  was  revealed 
to  him  in  letters  of  fire  when  he  wrote  The  Cossacks 
and  Sevastopol;  everything  that  he  wrote  after 
was  a  mere  amplification  and  additional  emphasis. 
But  he  was  young  then ;  and  although  he  saw 
the  light,  he  preferred  the  darkness.  He  knew 
then,  just  as  clearly  as  he  knew  later,  that  the 
life  in  accordance  with  New  Testament  teaching 
was  a  better  life  than  that  spent  in  following  his 
animal  instincts;  but  his  knowledge  did  not  save 
him. 

Even  the  revolutionary  views  on  art,  which 
he  expressed  toward  the  end  of  the  century  in 
his  book,  What  is  Art  ?  were  by  no  means  a  sudden 
discovery,  nor  do  they  reveal  a  change  in  his  at- 

1  For  a  very  unfavourable  view  of  Tolstoi's  later  conduct,  the 
"Tolstoi  legend,"  see  Merezhkovski,  Tolstoi  as  Man  and  Artist. 
185 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

titude.  The  accomplished  translator,  Mr.  Maude, 
said  in  his  preface,  "The  fundamental  thought 
expressed  in  this  book  leads  inevitably  to  con- 
clusions so  new,  so  unexpected,  and  so  contrary 
to  what  is  usually  maintained  in  literary  and 
artistic  circles,"  etc.  But  while  the  conclusions 
seemed  new  (and  absurd)  to  many  artists,  they 
were  not  at  all  new  to  Tolstoi.  So  early  as  1872 
he  practically  held  these  views.  In  a  letter  to  Stra- 
kov,  expressing  his  contempt  for  modern  Russian 
literature  and  the  language  of  the  great  poets 
and  novelists,  he  said:  "Pushkin  himself  appears 
to  me  ridiculous.  The  language  of  the  people,  on 
the  contrary,  has  sounds  to  express  everything 
that  the  poet  is  able  to  say,  and  it  is  very  dear  to 
me."  In  the  same  letter  he  wrote,  "  'Poor 
Lisa'  drew  tears  and  received  homage,  but  no 
one  reads  her  any  more,  while  popular  songs 
and  tales,  and  folk-lore  ballads  will  live  as  long 
as  the  Russian  language." 

In  his  views  of  art,  in  his  views  of  morals,  in  his 
views  of  religion,  Tolstoi  developed,  but  he  did 
not  change.  He  simply  followed  his  ideas  to  their 
farthest  possible  extreme,  so  that  many  Anglo- 
Saxons  suspected  him  even  of  madness.  In 
reality,  the  method  of  his  thought  is  characteristi- 
cally and  purely  Russian.  An  Englishman  may 
be  in  love  with  an  idea,  and  start  out  bravely  to 
186 


TOLSTOI 

follow  it ;  but  if  he  finds  it  leading  him  into  a 
position  contrary  to  the  experience  of  humanity, 
then  he  pulls  up,  and  decides  that  the  idea  must  be 
false,  even  if  he  can  detect  no  flaw  in  it;  not  so 
the  Russian;  the  idea  is  right,  and  humanity  is 
wrong. 

No  author  ever  told  us  so  much  about  him- 
self as  Tolstoi.  Not  only  do  we  now  possess  his 
letters  and  journals,  in  which  he  revealed  his 
inner  life  with  the  utmost  clarity  of  detail,  but  all 
his  novels,  even  those  that  seem  the  most  objective, 
are  really  part  of  his  autobiography.  Through  the 
persons  of  different  characters  he  is  always  talk- 
ing about  himself,  always  introspective.  That  is 
one  reason  why  his  novels  seem  so  amazingly  true 
to  life.  They  seem  true  because  they  are  true. 

Some  one  said  of  John  Stuart  Mill,  "Analysis  is 
the  king  of  his  intellect."  This  remark  is  also 
true  of  most  Russian  novelists,  and  particularly 
true  of  Tolstoi.  In  all  his  work,  historical  romance, 
realistic  novels,  religious  tracts,  his  greatest  power 
was  shown  in  the  correct  analysis  of  mental  states. 
And  he  took  all  human  nature  for  his  province. 
Strictly  speaking,  there  are  no  minor  characters 
in  his  books.  The  same  pains  are  taken  with 
persons  who  have  little  influence  on  the  course  of 
the  story,  as  with  the  chief  actors.  The  normal 
interests  him  even  more  than  the  abnormal,  which 
187 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

is  the  great  difference  between  his  work  and  that  of 
Gorki  and  Andreev,  as  it  was  the  most  striking 
difference  between  Shakespeare  and  his  later  con- 
temporaries. To  reveal  ordinary  people  just  as 
they  really  are,  —  sometimes  in  terrific  excitement, 
sometimes  in  humdrum  routine,  —  this  was  his  aim. 
Natural  scenery  is  occasionally  introduced,  like  the 
mountains  in  The  Cossacks,  to  show  how  the 
spectacle  affects  the  mind  of  the  person  who  is 
looking  at  it.  It  is  seldom  made  use  of  for  a  back- 
ground. Mere  description  occupied  a  very  small 
place  in  Tolstoi's  method.  The  intense  fidelity 
to  detail  in  the  portrayal  of  character,  whether  ob- 
sessed by  a  mighty  passion,  or  playing  with  a 
trivial  caprice,  is  the  chief  glory  of  his  work.  This 
is  why,  after  the  reading  of  Tolstoi,  so  many  other 
"realistic"  novels  seem  utterly  untrue  and  absurd. 
The  three  stories,  Childhood,  Boyhood,  Youth, 
now  generally  published  as  one  novel,  are  the  work 
of  a  genius,  but  not  a  work  of  genius.  They  are 
interesting  in  the  light  of  their  author's  later 
books,  and  they  are  valuable  as  autobiography. 
The  fact  that  he  himself  repudiated  them,  was 
ashamed  of  having  written  them,  and  declared  that 
their  style  was  unnatural,  means  little  or  much, 
according  to  one's  viewpoint.  But  the  undoubted 
power  revealed  here  and  there  in  their  pages  is 
immature,  a  mere  suggestion  of  what  was  to  follow. 
188 


TOLSTOI 

They  are  exercises  in  composition.  He  learned 
how  to  write  in  writing  these.  But  the  intention 
of  their  author  is  clear  enough.  His  "stress  lay 
on  the  incidents  in  the  development  of  a  soul." 
There  is  not  a  single  unusual  or  sensational  event 
in  the  whole  narrative,  nor  did  the  hero  grow  up 
in  any  strange  or  remarkable  environment.  The 
interest  therefore  is  not  in  what  happened,  but 
wholly  in  the  ripening  character  of  the  child.  The 
circumstances  are  partly  true  of  Tolstoi's  own 
boyhood,  partly  not;  he  purposely  mixed  his  own 
and  his  friends'  experiences.  But  mentally  the 
boy  is  Tolstoi  himself,  revealed  in  all  the  awk- 
wardness, self-consciousness,  and  morbidity  of 
youth.  The  boy's  pride,  vanity,  and  curious 
mixture  of  timidity  and  conceit  do  not  form  a 
very  attractive  picture,  and  were  not  intended  to. 
Tolstoi  himself  as  a  young  man  had  little  charm, 
and  his  numerous  portraits  all  plainly  indicate  the 
fact.  His  Satanic  pride  made  frank  friendship 
with  him  almost  an  impossibility.  Despite  our 
immense  respect  for  his  literary  power,  despite 
the  enormous  influence  for  good  that  his  later 
books  have  effected,  it  must  be  said  that  of  all 
the  great  Russian  writers,  Tolstoi  was  the  most 
unlovely. 

These  three  sketches,  taken  as  one,  are  grounded 
on  moral  ideas  —  the  same  ideas  that  later  com- 
189 


E;SSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

pletely  dominated  the  author's  life.  We  feel  his 
hatred  of  dissipation  and  of  artificiality.  The 
chapter  on  Love,  in  Youth,  might  also  form  a  part 
of  the  Kreuzer  Sonata,  so  fully  does  it  harmonise 
with  the  teaching  of  the  later  work. 

"I  do  not  speak  of  the  love  of  a  young  man  for 
a  young  girl,  and  hers  for  him;  I  fear  these  tender- 
nesses, and  I  have  been  so  unfortunate  in  life  as 
never  to  have  seen  a  single  spark  of  truth  in  this 
species  of  love,  but  only  a  lie,  in  which  sentiment, 
connubial  relations,  money,  a  desire  to  bind  or  to 
unbind  one's  hands,  have  to  such  an  extent  con- 
fused the  feeling  itself,  that  it  has  been  impossible 
to  disentangle  it.  I  am  speaking  of  the  love  for 
man." l 

Throughout  this  book,  as  in  all  Tolstoi's  work, 
is  the  eternal  question  Why  ?  For  what  purpose 
is  life,  and  to  what  end  am  I  living?  What  is 
the  real  meaning  of  human  ambition  and  human 
effort? 

Tolstoi's  reputation  as  an  artist  quite  rightly 

began  with  the  publication  of  the  three  Sevastopol 

stories,  Sevastopol  in  December  [1854],  Sevastopol 

in  May,  Sevastopol  in  August.    This  is  the  work, 

not  of  a  promising  youth,  but  of  a  master.     There 

is  not  a  weak  or  a  superfluous  paragraph.    Maurice 

Hewlett  has  cleverly  turned  the  charge  that  those 

1  Translated  by  Isabel  Hapgood. 

190 


TOLSTOI 

who  oppose  war  are  sentimentalists,  by  risposting 
that  the  believers  in  war  are  the  real  sentimen- 
talists: ''they  do  not  see  the  murder  beneath  the 
khaki  and  the  flags."  Tolstoi  was  one  of  the  first 
novelists  to  strip  war  of  its  glamour,  and  portray 
its  dull,  commonplace  filth,  and  its  unspeakable 
horror.  In  reading  that  masterpiece  La  Debacle, 
and  every  one  who  believes  in  war  ought  to  read 
it,  one  feels  that  Zola  must  have  learned  something 
from  Tolstoi.  The  Russian  novelist  stood  in  the 
midst  of  the  flying  shells,  and  how  little  did  any 
one  then  realise  that  his  own  escape  from  death 
was  an  event  of  far  greater  importance  to  the  world 
than  the  outcome  of  the  war  ! 

There  is  little  patriotic  feeling  in  Sevastopol,  and 
its  success  was  artistic  rather  than  political.  Of 
course  Russian  courage  is  praised,  but  so  is  the 
courage  of  the  French.  In  spite  of  the  fact  that 
Tolstoi  was  a  Russian  officer,  actively  fighting  for 
his  country,  he  shows  a  singular  aloofness  from 
party  passion  in  all  his  descriptions.  The  only 
partisan  statement  is  in  the  half  sentence,  "it  is  a 
comfort  to  think  that  it  was  not  we  who  began  this 
war,  that  we  are  only  defending  our  own  country," 
which  might  profitably  be  read  by  those  who  believe 
in  "just"  wars,  along  with  Tennyson's  Maud,  pub- 
lished at  the  same  time.  Tennyson  was  cock-sure 
that  the  English  were  God's  own  people,  and  in  all 
191 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

this  bloodshed  were  doing  the  blessed  work  of  their 
Father  in  heaven. 

"  God's  just  wrath  shall  be  wreak'd  on  a  giant  liar." 

Throughout  the  heat  of  the  conflict,  Tolstoi  felt 
its  utter  absurdity,  really  holding  the  same  views 
of  war  that  he  held  as  an  old  man.  "And  why  do 
not  Christian  people,"  he  wrote  in  Sevastopol  in 
May,  "who  profess  the  one  great  law  of  love  and 
self-sacrifice,  when  they  behold  what  they  have 
wrought,  fall  in  repentance  upon  their  knees  before 
Him  who,  when  He  gave  them  life,  implanted  in 
the  soul  of  each  of  them,  together  with  the  fear  of 
death,  a  love  of  the  good  and  beautiful,  and,  with 
tears  of  joy  and  happiness,  embrace  each  other  like 
brothers?" 

Together  with  the  fear  of  death  —  this  fear  is  ana- 
lysed by  Tolstoi  in  all  its  manifestations.  The  fear 
of  the  young  officer,  as  he  exchanges  the  enthusiastic 
departure  from  Petersburg  for  the  grim  reality  of  the 
bastions;  the  fear  of  the  still  sound  and  healthy 
man  as  he  enters  the  improvised  hospitals;  the  fear 
as  the  men  watch  the  point  of  approaching  light 
that  means  a  shell;  the  fear  of  the  men  lying  on  the 
ground,  waiting  with  closed  eyes  for  the  shell  to 
burst.  It  is  the  very  psychology  of  death.  In 
reading  the  account  of  Praskukhin's  sensations  just 
before  death,  one  feels,  as  one  does  in  reading  the 
192 


TOLSTOI 

thoughts  of  Anna  Karenina  under  the  train,  that 
Tolstoi  himself  must  have  died  in  some  previous 
existence,  in  order  to  analyse  death  so  clearly. 
And  all  these  officers,  who  walk  in  the  Valley  of  the 
Shadow,  have  their  selfish  ambitions,  their  absurd 
social  distinctions,  and  their  overweening,  egotisti- 
cal vanity. 

At  the  end  of  the  middle  sketch,  Sevastopol  in 
May,  Tolstoi  wrote  out  the  only  creed  to  which  he 
remained  consistently  true  all  his  life,  the  creed  of 
Art. 

"Who  is  the  villain,  who  the  hero  ?  All  are  good 
and  all  are  evil. 

"The  hero  of  my  tale,  whom  I  love  with  all  the 
strength  of  my  soul,  whom  I  have  tried  to  set  forth 
in  all  his  beauty,  and  who  has  always  been,  is,  and 
always  will  be  most  beautiful,  is  —  the  truth." 

The  next  important  book,  The  Cossacks,  is  not 
a  great  novel.  Tolstoi  himself  grew  tired  of  it,  and 
never  finished  it.  It  is  interesting  as  an  excellent 
picture  of  an  interesting  community,  and  it  is  in- 
teresting as  a  diary,  for  the  chief  character,  Olenin, 
is  none  other  than  Leo  Tolstoi.  He  departed  for 
the  Caucasus  in  much  the  same  manner  as  the  young 
writer,  and  his  observations  and  reflections  there  are 
Tolstoi's  own.  The  triple  contrast  in  the  book  is 
powerfully  shown :  first,  the  contrast  between  the 
majesty  of  the  mountains  and  the  pettiness  of  man; 
o  193 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

second,  the  contrast  between  the  noble  simplicity 
of  the  Cossack  women  and  the  artificiality  of  the 
padded  shapes  of  society  females;  third,  the  con- 
trast between  the  two  ways  of  life,  that  which  Olenin 
recognises  as  right,  the  Christian  law  of  self-denial, 
but  which  he  does  not  follow,  and  the  almost  sub- 
lime pagan  bodily  joy  of  old  Uncle  Yeroshka, 
who  lives  in  exact  harmony  with  his  creed. 
Yeroshka  is  a  living  force,  a  real  character,  and 
might  have  been  created  by  Gogol. 

Olenin,  who  is  young  Tolstoi,  and  not  very  much 
of  a  man,  soliloquises  in  language  that  was 
echoed  word  for  word  by  the  Tolstoi  of  the  twen- 
tieth century. 

"Happiness  consists  in  living  for  others.  This 
also  is  clear.  Man  is  endowed  with  a  craving  for 
happiness ;  therefore  it  must  be  legitimate.  If  he 
satisfies  it  egotistically,  —  that  is,  if  he  bends  his 
energies  toward  acquiring  wealth,  fame,  physical 
comforts,  love,  —  it  may  happen  that  circumstances 
will  make  it  impossible  to  satisfy  this  craving.  In 
fact,  these  cravings  are  illegitimate,  but  the  craving 
for  happiness  is  not  illegitimate.  What  cravings 
can  always  be  satisfied  independently  of  external 
conditions  ?  Love,  self-denial."  * 

His  later  glorification  of  physical  labour,  as  the 
way  of  salvation  for  irresolute  and  overeducated 

1  Translated  by  Isabel  Hapgood. 
194 


TOLSTOI 

Russians,  is  as  emphatically  stated  in  The  Cossacks 
as  it  is  in  the  Kreuzer  Sonata. 

"The  constant  hard  field  labour,  and  the  duties 
intrusted  to  them,  give  a  peculiarly  independent, 
masculine  character  to  the  Greben  women,  and  have 
served  to  develop  in  them,  to  a  remarkable  degree, 
physical  powers,  healthy  minds,  decision  and  stabil- 
ity of  character." 

The  chief  difference  between  Turgenev  and  Tol- 
stoi is  that  Turgenev  was  always  an  artist ;  Tolstoi 
always  a  moralist.  It  was  not  necessary  for  him  to 
abandon  novels,  and  write  tracts ;  for  in  every  novel 
his  moral  teaching  was  abundantly  clear. 

With  the  possible  exception  of  Taras  Bulba,  War 
and  Peace  is  the  greatest  historical  romance  in  the 
Russian  language,  perhaps  the  greatest  in  any  lan- 
guage. It  is  not  illumined  by  the  humour  of  any 
such  character  as  Zagloba,  who  brightens  the  great 
chronicles  of  Sienkiewicz ;  for  if  Tolstoi  had  had 
an  accurate  sense  of  humour,  or  the  power  to  create 
great  comic  personages,  he  would  never  have  been 
led  into  the  final  extremes  of  doctrine.  But  al- 
though this  long  book  is  unrelieved  by  mirth,  and 
although  as  an  objective  historical  panorama  it 
does  not  surpass  The  Deluge,  it  is  nevertheless  a 
greater  book.  It  is  greater  because  its  psycholog- 
ical analysis  is  more  profound  and  more  cunning. 
It  is  not  so  much  a  study  of  war,  or  the  study  of  a 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

vital  period  in  the  earth's  history,  as  it  is  a  revela- 
tion of  all  phases  of  human  nature  in  a  time  of 
terrible  stress.  It  is  filled  with  individual  por- 
traits, amazingly  distinct. 

Professors  of  history  and  military  experts  have 
differed  widely  —  as  it  is  the  especial  privilege  of 
scholars  and  experts  to  differ  —  concerning  the  ac- 
curacy of  War  and  Peace  as  a  truthful  narrative  of 
events.  But  this  is  really  a  matter  of  no  impor- 
tance. Shakespeare  is  the  greatest  writer  the  world 
has  ever  seen ;  but  he  is  not  an  authority  on  history ; 
he  is  an  authority  on  man.  When  we  wish  to  study 
the  Wars  of  the  Roses,  we  do  not  turn  to  his  pages, 
brilliant  as  they  are.  Despite  all  the  geographical 
and  historical  research  that  Tolstoi  imposed  on 
himself  as  a  preliminary  to  the  writing  of  War  and 
Peace,  he  did  not  write  the  history  of  that  epoch, 
nor  would  a  genuine  student  quote  him  as  an  author- 
ity. He  created  a  prose  epic,  a  splendid  historical 
panorama,  vitalised  by  a  marvellous  imagination, 
where  the  creatures  of  his  fancy  are  more  alive  than 
Napoleon  and  Alexander.  Underneath  all  the 
march  of  armies,  the  spiritual  purpose  of  the  author 
is  clear.  The  real  greatness  of  man  consists  not  in 
fame  or  pride  of  place,  but  in  simplicity  and  purity 
of  heart.  Once  more  he  gives  us  the  contrast  be- 
tween artificiality  and  reality. 

This  novel,  like  all  of  Tolstoi's,  is  by  no  means 
196 


TOLSTOI 

a  perfect  work  of  art.  Its  outline  is  irregular  and 
ragged ;  its  development  devious.  It  contains  many 
excrescences,  superfluities,  digressions.  But  it  is  a 
dictionary  of  life,  where  one  may  look  up  any  pas- 
sion, any  emotion,  any  ambition,  any  weakness, 
and  find  its  meaning.  Strakov  called  it  a  complete 
picture  of  the  Russia  of  that  time,  and  a  complete 
picture  of  humanity. 

Its  astonishing  inequalities  make  the  reader  at 
times  angrily  impatient,  and  at  other  times  inspired. 
One  easily  understands  the  varying  emotions  of  Tur- 
genev,  who  read  the  story  piecemeal,  in  the  course 
of  its  publication.  "The  second  part  of  1805  is 
weak.  How  petty  and  artificial  all  that  is !  .  .  . 
where  are  the  real  features  of  the  epoch  ?  where 
is  the  historical  colour?"  Again:  "I  have  just 
finished  reading  the  fourth  volume.  It  contains 
things  that  are  intolerable  and  things  that  are  as- 
tounding; these  latter  are  the  things  that  dominate 
the  work,  and  they  are  so  admirable  that  never  has 
a  Russian  written  anything  better;  I  do  not  believe 
there  has  ever  been  written  anything  so  good." 
Again:  "How  tormenting  are  his  obstinate  repe- 
titions of  the  same  thing :  the  down  on  the  upper  lip 
of  the  Princess  Bolkonsky.  But  with  all  that, 
there  are  in  this  novel  passages  that  no  man  in 
Europe  except  Tolstoi  could  have  written,  things 
which  put  me  into  a  frenzy  of  enthusiasm." 
197 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN   NOVELISTS 

Tolstoi's  genius  reached  its  climax  in  Anna  Kare- 
nina.  Greatly  as  I  admire  some  of  his  other  books, 
I  would  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  if  a  forced  choice  had 
to  be  made,  I  had  rather  have  Anna  Karenina  than 
all  the  rest  of  his  works  put  together.  Leave  that 
out,  and  his  position  in  the  history  of  fiction  dimin- 
ishes at  once.  It  is  surely  the  most  powerful  novel 
written  by  any  man  of  our  time,  and  it  would  be 
difficult  to  name  a  novel  of  any  period  that  sur- 
passes it  in  strength.  I  well  remember  the  excite- 
ment with  which  we  American  undergraduates 
in  the  eighties  read  the  poor  and  clipped  English 
translation  of  this  book.  Twenty  years'  contem- 
plation of  it  makes  it  seem  steadily  greater. 

Yet  its  composition  was  begun  by  a  mere  freak, 
by  something  analogous  to  a  sporting  proposition. 
He  was  thinking  of  writing  a  historical  romance  of 
the  times  of  Peter  the  Great,  but  the  task  seemed 
formidable,  and  he  felt  no  well  of  inspiration.  One 
evening,  the  19  March  1873,  he  entered  a  room 
where  his  ten-year-old  boy  had  been  reading  aloud 
from  a  story  by  Pushkin.  Tolstoi  picked  up  the 
book  and  read  the  first  sentence:  "On  the  eve  of 
the  fete  the  guests  began  to  arrive."  He  was 
charmed  by  the  abrupt  opening,  and  cried:  "That's 
the  way  to  begin  a  book !  The  reader  is  immedi- 
ately taken  into  the  action.  Another  writer  would 
have  begun  by  a  description,  but  Pushkin,  he  goes 
198 


TOLSTOI 

straight  to  his  goal."  Some  one  in  the  room  sug- 
gested playfully  to  Tolstoi  that  he  try  a  similar 
commencement  and  write  a  novel.  He  immediately 
withdrew,  and  wrote  the  first  sentence  of  Anna 
Karenina.  The  next  day  the  Countess  said  in  a 
letter  to  her  sister:  "Yesterday  Leo  all  of  a  sudden 
began  to  write  a  novel  of  contemporary  life.  The 
subject :  the  unfaithful  wife  and  the  whole  resulting 
tragedy.  I  am  very  happy." 

The  suicide  of  the  heroine  was  taken  almost  liter- 
ally from  an  event  that  happened  in  January  1872. 
We  learn  this  by  a  letter  of  the  Countess,  written 
on  the  10  January  in  that  year:  "We  have  just 
learned  of  a  very  dramatic  story.  You  remember, 
at  Bibikov's,  Anna  Stepanova?  Well,  this  Anna 
Stepanova  was  jealous  of  all  the  governesses  at  Bib- 
ikov's house.  She  displayed  her  jealousy  so  much 
that  finally  Bibikov  became  angry  and  quarrelled 
with  her ;  then  Anna  Stepanova  left  him  and  went 
to  Tula.  For  three  days  no  one  knew  where  she 
was.  At  last,  on  the  third  day,  she  appeared  at  Yas- 
senky,  at  five  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  with  a  little 
parcel.  At  the  railway  station  she  gave  the  coach- 
man a  letter  for  Bibikov,  and  gave  him  a  ruble  for 
a  tip.  Bibikov  would  not  take  the  letter,  and  when 
the  coachman  returned  to  the  station,  he  learned 
that  Anna  Stepanova  had  thrown  herself  under  the 
train  and  was  crushed  to  death.  She  had  certainly 
199 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

done  it  intentionally.  The  judge  came,  and  they 
read  him  the  letter.  It  said :  '  You  are  my  mur- 
derer: be  happy,  if  assassins  can  be.  If  you 
care  to,  you  can  see  my  corpse  on  the  rails,  at  Yas- 
senky.'  Leo  and  Uncle  Kostia  have  gone  to  the 
autopsy." 

Most  of  the  prominent  characters  in  the  book  are 
taken  from  life,  and  the  description  of  the  death  of 
Levin's  brother  is  a  recollection  of  the  time  when 
Tolstoi's  own  brother  died  in  his  arms. 

Levin  is,  of  course,  Tolstoi  himself;  and  all  his 
eternal  doubts  and  questionings,  his  total  dissatisfac- 
tion and  condemnation  of  artificial  social  life  in  the 
cities,  his  spiritual  despair,  and  his  final  release  from 
suffering  at  the  magic  word  of  the  peasant  are 
strictly  autobiographical.  When  the  muzhik  told 
Levin  that  one  man  lived  for  his  belly,  and  another 
for  his  soul,  he  became  greatly  excited,  and 
eagerly  demanded  further  knowledge  of  his  humble 
teacher.  He  was  once  more  told  that  man  must  live 
according  to  God  —  according  to  truth.  His  soul 
was  immediately  filled,  says  Tolstoi,  with  brilliant 
light.  He  was  indeed  relieved  of  his  burden,  like 
Christian  at  the  sight  of  the  Cross.  Now  Tolstoi's 
subsequent  doctrinal  works  are  all  amplifications 
of  the  conversation  between  Levin  and  the  peasant, 
which  in  itself  contains  the  real  significance  of  the 
whole  novel. 


TOLSTOI 

Even  Anna  Karenina,  with  all  its  titanic  power,  is 
not  an  artistic  model  of  a  story.  It  contains  much 
superfluous  matter,  and  the  balancing  off  of  the  two 
couples,  Levin  and  Kitty,  with  Vronsky  and  Anna, 
is  too  obviously  arranged  by  the  author.  One 
Russian  critic  was  so  disgusted  with  the  book  that 
he  announced  the  plan  of  a  continuation  of  the  novel 
where  Levin  was  to  fall  in  love  with  his  cow,  and 
Kitty's  resulting  jealousy  was  to  be  depicted. 

It  has  no  organic  plot  —  simply  a  succession  of 
pictures.  The  plot  does  not  develop  —  but  the 
characters  do,  thus  resembling  our  own  individual 
human  lives.  It  has  no  true  unity,  such  as  that 
shown,  for  example,  by  the  Scarlet  Letter.  Our 
interest  is  largely  concentrated  in  Anna,  but  besides 
the  parallel  story  of  Kitty,  we  have  many  other 
incidents  and  characters  which  often  contribute 
nothing  to  the  progress  of  the  novel.  They  are  a 
part  of  life,  however,  so  Tolstoi  includes  them. 
One  might  say  there  is  an  attempt  at  unity,  in  the 
person  of  that  sleek  egotist,  Stepan  —  his  relation 
by  blood  and  marriage  to  both  Anna  and  Kitty 
makes  him  in  some  sense  a  link  between  the  two 
couples.  But  he  is  more  successful  as  a  personage 
than  as  the  keystone  of  an  arch.  The  novel  would 
really  lose  nothing  by  considerable  cancellation. 
The  author  might  have  omitted  Levin's  two 
brothers,  the  whole  Kitty  and  Levin  history  could 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

have  been  liberally  abbreviated,  and  many  of  the 
conversations  on  philosophy  and  politics  would 
never  be  missed.  Yes,  the  work  could  be  shortened, 
but  it  would  take  a  Turgenev  to  do  it. 

Although  we  may  not  always  find  Art  in  the  book, 
we  always  find  Life.  No  novel  hi  my  recollection 
combines  wider  range  with  greater  intensity.  It  is 
extensive  and  intensive  —  broad  and  deep.  The 
simplicity  of  the  style  in  the  most  impressive  scenes 
is  so  startling  that  it  seems  as  if  there  were  some- 
how no  style  and  no  language  there ;  nothing  what- 
ever between  the  life  hi  the  book  and  the  reader's 
mind ;  not  only  no  impenetrable  wall  of  style,  such 
as  Meredith  and  James  pile  up  with  curious  mosaic, 
so  that  one  cannot  see  the  characters  in  the  story 
through  the  exquisite  and  opaque  structure,  —  but 
really  no  medium  at  all,  transparent  or  otherwise. 
The  emotional  life  of  the  men  and  women  enter  into 
our  emotions  with  no  let  or  hindrance,  and  that  per- 
fect condition  of  communication  is  realised  which 
Browning  believed  would  characterise  the  future 
life,  when  spirits  would  somehow  converse  without ' 
the  slow,  troublesome,  and  inaccurate  means  of 
language. 

I  believe  that  the  average  man  can  learn  more 
about  life  by  reading  Anna  Karenina  than  he  can 
by  his  own  observation  and  experience.  One 
learns  much  about  Russian  life  in  city  and  country, 


TOLSTOI 

much  about  human  nature,  and  much  about  one's 
self,  not  all  of  which  is  flattering,  but  perhaps 
profitable  for  instruction. 

This  is  the  true  realism  —  external  and  internal. 
The  surface  of  things,  clothes,  habits  of  speech, 
manners  and  fashions,  the  way  people  enter  a 
drawing-room,  the  way  one  inhales  a  cigarette,  — 
everything  is  truthfully  reported.  Then  there  is 
the  true  internal  realism,  which  dives  below  all 
appearances  and  reveals  the  dawn  of  a  new  passion, 
the  first  faint  stir  of  an  ambition,  the  slow  and  cruel 
advance  of  the  poison  of  jealousy,  the  ineradicable 
egotism,  the  absolute  darkness  of  unspeakable 
remorse.  No  caprice  is  too  trivial,  no  passion  too 
colossal,  to  be  beyond  the  reach  of  the  author  of 
this  book. 

Some  novels  have  attained  a  wide  circulation  by 
means  of  one  scene.  In  recollecting  Anna  Karenina, 
powerful  scenes  crowd  into  the  memory  —  intro- 
spective and  analytic  as  it  is,  it  is  filled  with  dra- 
matic climaxes.  The  sheer  force  of  some  of  these 
scenes  is  almost  terrifying.  The  first  meeting  of 
Anna  and  Vronsky  at  the  railway  station,  the  mid- 
night interview  in  the  storm  on  the  way  back  to 
Petersburg,  the  awful  dialogue  between  them  after 
she  has  fallen  (omitted  from  the  first  American 
translation),  the  fearful  excitement  of  the  horse- 
race, the  sickness  of  Anna,  Karenin's  forgiveness, 
203 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

the  humiliation  of  Vronsky,  the  latter's  attempt 
at  suicide,  the  steadily  increasing  scenes  of  jealousy 
with  the  shadow  of  death  coming  nearer,  the  clair- 
voyant power  of  the  author  in  describing  the  death 
of  Anna,  and  the  departure  of  Vronsky,  where  the 
railway  station  reminds  him  with  intrusive  agony 
of  the  contrast  between  his  first  and  last  view  of  the 
woman  he  loved.  No  one  but  Tolstoi  would  ever 
have  given  his  tragic  character  a  toothache  at  that 
particular  time;  but  the  toothache,  added  to  the 
heartache,  gives  the  last  touch  of  reality.  No 
reader  has  ever  forgotten  Vronsky,  as  he  stands  for 
the  last  time  by  the  train,  his  heart  torn  by  the 
vulture  of  Memory,  and  his  face  twisted  by  the 
steady  pain  in  his  tooth. 

Every  character  in  the  book,  major  and  minor, 
is  a  living  human  being.  Stepan,  with  his  healthy, 
pampered  body,  and  his  inane  smile  at  Dolly's 
reproachful  face ;  Dolly,  absolutely  commonplace 
and  absolutely  real ;  Yashvin,  the  typical  officer ; 
the  English  trainer,  Cord ;  Betsy,  always  cheerful, 
always  heartless,  probably  the  worst  character 
in  the  whole  book,  Satan's  own  spawn ;  Karenin 
himself,  not  ridiculous,  like  an  English  Restoration 
husband,  but  with  an  overwhelming  power  of  creat- 
ing ennui,  in  which  he  lives  and  moves  and  has  his 
being. 

From  the  first  day  of  his  acquaintance  with  Anna, 
204 


TOLSTOI 

Vronsky  steadily  rises,  and  Anna  steadily  falls. 
This  is  in  accordance  with  the  fundamental,  inex- 
orable moral  law.  Vronsky,  a  handsome  man  with 
no  purpose  in  life,  who  has  had  immoral  relations 
with  a  large  variety  of  women,  now  falls  for  the  first 
time  really  in  love,  and  his  love  for  one  woman 
strengthens  his  mind  and  heart,  gives  him  an  ob- 
ject hi  life,  and  concentrates  the  hitherto  scattered 
energies  of  his  soul.  His  development  as  a  man, 
his  rise  in  dignity  and  force  of  character,  is  one  of 
the  notable  features  of  the  whole  book.  When  we 
first  see  him,  he  is  colourless,  a  mere  fashionable 
type ;  he  constantly  becomes  more  interesting,  and 
when  we  last  see  him,  he  has  not  only  our  profound 
sympathy,  but  our  cordial  respect.  He  was  a 
figure  in  a  uniform,  and  has  become  a  man.  Devo- 
tion to  one  woman  has  raised  him  far  above 
trivialities. 

The  woman  pays  for  all  this.  Never  again,  not 
even  in  the  transports  of  passion,  will  she  be  so 
happy  as  when  we  first  see  her  on  that  bright  winter 
day.  She  grows  in  intelligence  by  the  fruit  of  the 
tree,  and  sinks  in  moral  worth  and  in  peace  of  mind. 
Never,  since  the  time  of  Helen,  has  there  been 
a  woman  in  literature  of  more  physical  charm. 
Tolstoi,  whose  understanding  of  the  body  is  almost 
supernatural,  has  created  in  Anna  a  woman,  quite 
ordinary  from  the  mental  and  spiritual  point  of 
205 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

view,  but  who  leaves  on  every  reader  an  indelible 
vision  of  surpassing  loveliness.  One  is  not  sur- 
prised at  Vronsky's  instant  and  total  surrender. 

As  a  study  of  sin,  the  moral  force  of  the  story  is 
tremendous.  At  the  end,  the  words  of  Paul  come 
irresistibly  into  the  mind.  To  be  carnally  minded  is 
death;  to  be  spiritually  minded  is  life  and  peace. 

One  can  understand  Tolstoi's  enthusiasm  for 
the  Gospel  in  his  later  years,  and  also  the  prodigious 
influence  of  his  parables  and  evangelistic  narratives, 
by  remembering  that  the  Russian  mind,  which,  as 
Gogol  said,  is  more  capable  than  any  other  of  re- 
ceiving the  Christian  religion,  had  been  starved  for 
centuries.  The  Orthodox  Church  of  Russia  seems 
to  have  been  and  to  be  as  remote  from  the  life  of  the 
people  as  the  political  bureaucracy.  The  hungry 
sheep  looked  up  and  were  not  fed.  The  Christian 
religion  is  the  dominating  force  in  the  works  of 
Gogol,  Tolstoi,  and  Dostoevski.  How  eager  the 
Russian  people  are  for  the  simple  Gospel,  and  with 
what  amazing  joy  they  now  receive  it,  remind  one 
of  the  Apostolic  age.  Accurate  testimony  to  this 
fact  has  lately  been  given  by  a  dispassionate  Ger- 
man observer :  — 

"  In  the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  the 

Bible  followed  in  the  track  of  the  knowledge  of 

reading  and  writing  in  the  Russian  village.     It 

worked,  and  works,  far  more  powerfully  than  all 

206 


TOLSTOI 

the  Nihilists,  and  if  the  Holy  Synod  wishes  to  be 
consistent  in  its  policy  of  spiritual  enslavement,  it 
must  begin  by  checking  the  distribution  of  the  Bible. 
The  origin  of  the  'Stunde,'  from  the  prayer  hour 
of  the  German  Menonites  and  other  evangelical 
colonist  meetings,  is  well  known.  The  religious 
sense  of  the  Russian,  brooding  for  centuries  over 
empty  forms,  combined  with  the  equally  repressed 
longing  for  spiritual  life,  —  these  quickly  seized 
upon  the  power  of  a  simple  and  practical  living 
religious  doctrine,  and  the  'Stundist'  movement 
spread  rapidly  over  the  whole  south  of  the  Empire. 
Wherever  a  Bible  in  the  Russian  language  is  to  be 
found  in  the  village,  there  a  circle  rapidly  forms 
around  its  learned  owner ;  he  is  listened  to  eagerly, 
and  the  Word  has  its  effect.  .  .  . 

"Pashkov,  a  colonel  of  the  Guards,  who  died  in 
Paris  at  the  beginning  of  1902,  started  in  the 
'eighties'  a  movement  in  St.  Petersburg,  which  was 
essentially  evangelical,  with  a  methodistical  tinge, 
and  which  soon  seized  upon  all  the  strata  of  the 
population  in  the  capital.  Substantially  it  was  a 
religious  revival  from  the  dry-as-dust  Greek  church 
similar  to  that  which  in  the  sixteenth  century  turned 
against  the  Romish  church  in  Germany  and  in 
Switzerland.  The  Gospel  was  to  Pashkov  him- 
self new,  good  tidings,  and  as  such  he  carried  it  into 
the  distinguished  circles  which  he  assembled  at  his 
207 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 


ice  on  the  Neva,  and  as  such  he  brought  it 
amongst  the  crowds  of  cabmen,  labourers,  laun- 
dresses, etc.,  whom  he  called  from  the  streets  to 
hear  the  news.  Pashkov's  name  was  known  by  the 
last  crossing-sweeper,  and  many  thousands  blessed 
him,  some  because  they  had  been  moved  by  the 
religious  spirit  which  glowed  in  him,  others  because 
they  knew  of  the  many  charitable  institutions  which 
he  had  founded  with  his  own  means  and  with  the 
help  of  rich  men  and  women  friends.  I  myself  shall 
never  forget  the  few  hours  which  I  spent  in  conversa- 
tion with  this  man,  simple  in  spirit  as  in  education, 
but  so  rich  in  religious  feeling  and  in  true  humility. 
To  me  he  could  offer  nothing  new,  for  all  that  to 
him  was  new  I,  the  son  of  Lutheran  parents,  had 
known  from  my  childhood  days.  But  what  was 
new  to  me  was  the  phenomenon  of  a  man  who  had 
belonged  for  fifty  years  to  a  Christian  Church  and 
had  only  now  discovered  as  something  new  what  is 
familiar  to  every  member  of  an  evangelical  com- 
munity as  the  sum  and  substance  of  Christian  teach- 
ing. To  him  the  Gospel  itself  was  something  new,  a 
revelation. 

"  This  has  been  the  case  of  many  thousands  in  the 
Russian  Empire  when  they  opened  the  Bible  for  the 
first  time.  The  spark  flew  from  village  to  village 
and  took  fire,  because  the  people  were  thirsting  for 
a  spiritual,  religious  life,  because  it  brought  comfort 
208 


TOLSTOI 

in  their  material  misery,  and  food  for  their  minds. 
.  .  .  Holy  Vladimir,  with  his  Byzantine  priests, 
brought  no  living  Christianity  into  the  land,  and 
the  common  Russian  had  not  been  brought  into 
contact  with  it  during  the  nine  hundred  years  which 
have  elapsed  since.  Wherever  it  penetrates  to-day 
with  the  Bible,  there  its  effect  is  apparent.  It  is 
such  as  the  best  Government  could  not  accomplish 
by  worldly  means  alone.  But  it  is  diametrically 
opposed  to  the  State  Church ;  it  leads  to  secession 
from  orthodoxy,  and  the  State  has  entered  upon  a 
crusade  against  it."  1 

In  The  Power  of  Darkness,  Ivan  Ilyich,  and  the 
Kreuzer  Sonata  Tolstoi  has  shown  the  way  of  Death. 
In  Resurrection  he  has  shown  the  way  of  Life. 

The  most  sensational  of  all  his  books  is  the 
Kreuzer  Sonata;  it  was  generally  misunderstood,:and 
from  that  tune  some  of  his  friends  walked  no  more 
with  him.  By  a  curious  freak  of  the  powers  of  this 
world,  it  was  for  a  time  taboo  in  the  United  States, 
and  its  passage  by  post  was  forbidden ;  then  the 
matter  was  taken  to  the  courts,  and  a  certain 
upright  judge  declared  that  so  far  from  the  book 
being  vicious,  it  condemned  vice  and  immorality 
on  every  page.  He  not  only  removed  the  ban,  but 
recommended  its  wider  circulation.  The  circum- 

1  Russia  of  To-day,  by  Baron  E.  von  der  Briiggen.    Translated 
by  M.  Sandwith,  London,  1904.     Pages  165-167. 
P  209 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

stances  that  gave  rise  to  its  composition  are  de- 
scribed in  an  exceedingly  interesting  article  in  the 
New  York  Sun  for  10  October  1909,  .4  Visit  to  Count 
Leo  Tolstoi  in  1887,  by  Madame  Nadine  Helbig. 
The  whole  article  should  be  read  for  the  charming 
picture  it  gives  of  the  patriarchal  happiness  at 
Yasnaya  Polyana,  and  while  she  saw  clearly  the  real 
comfort  enjoyed  by  Tolstoi,  which  aroused  the 
fierce  wrath  of  Merezhkovski,  she  proved  also  how 
much  good  was  accomplished  by  the  old  novelist  in 
the  course  of  a  single  average  day. 

"  Never  shall  I  forget  the  evening  when  the 
young  Polish  violinist,  whom  I  have  already  men- 
tioned, asked  me  to  play  with  him  Beethoven's 
sonata  for  piano  and  violin,  dedicated  to  Kreuzer, 
his  favourite  piece,  which  he  had  long  been  unable 
to  play  for  want  of  a  good  piano  player. 

"Tolstoi  listened  with  growing  attention.  He 
had  the  first  movement  played  again,  and  after  the 
last  note  of  the  sonata  he  went  out  quietly  without 
saying,  as  usual,  good  night  to  his  family  and  guests. 

"That  night  was  created  the  'Kreuzer  Sonata' 
in  all  its  wild  force.  Shortly  afterward  he  sent  me 
in  Rome  the  manuscript  of  it.  Tolstoi  was  the  best 
listener  whom  I  have  ever  had  the  luck  to  play  to. 
He  forgot  himself  and  his  surroundings.  His 
expression  changed  with  the  music.  Tears  ran 
down  his  cheeks  at  some  beautiful  adagio,  and  he 


TOLSTOI 

would  say,  'Tania,  just  give  me  a  fresh  handker- 
chief; I  must  have  got  a  cold  to-day.'  I  had  to 
play  generally  Beethoven  and  Schumann  to  him. 
He  did  not  approve  of  Bach,  and  on  the  other  hand 
you  could  make  him  raving  mad  with  Liszt,  and  still 
more  with  Wagner." 

Many  hundreds  of  amateur  players  have  strug- 
gled through  the  music  of  the  Kreuzer  Sonata, 
trying  vainly  to  see  in  it  what  Tolstoi  declared  it 
means.  Of  course  the  significance  attached  to  it 
by  Tolstoi  existed  only  in  his  vivid  imagination, 
Beethoven  being  the  healthiest  of  all  great  com- 
posers. If  the  novelist  had  really  wished  to  de- 
scribe sensual  music,  he  would  have  made  a  much 
more  felicitous  choice  of  Tristan  und  Isolde. 

Although  his  own  married  life  was  until  the  last 
years  happy  as  man  could  wish,  Tolstoi  introduced 
into  the  Kreuzer  Sonata  passages  from  his  own  exist- 
ence. When  Posdnichev  is  engaged,  he  gives  his 
fiancee  his  memoirs,  containing  a  truthful  account 
of  his  various  liaisons.  She  is  in  utter  despair,  and 
for  a  time  thinks  of  breaking  off  the  engagement. 
All  this  was  literally  true  of  the  author  himself. 
When  a  boy,  the  hero  was  led  to  a  house  of  ill-fame 
by  a  friend  of  his  brother,  "a  very  gay  student,  one 
of  those  who  are  called  good  fellows."  This  reminds 
us  of  a  precisely  similar  attempt  described  by  Tol- 
stoi in  Youth.  Furthermore,  Posdnichev's  self- 

211 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

righteousness  in  the  fact  that  although  he  had  been 
dissipated,  he  determined  to  be  faithful  to  his  wife, 
was  literally  and  psychologically  true  in  Tolstoi's 
own  life. 

The  Kreuzer  Sonata  shows  no  diminution  of  Tol- 
stoi's realistic  power:  the  opening  scenes  on  the 
train,  the  analysis  of  the  hero's  mind  during  the 
early  years  of  his  married  life,  and  especially  the 
murder,  all  betray  the  familiar  power  of  simplicity 
and  fidelity  to  detail.  The  passage  of  the  blade 
through  the  corset  and  then  into  something  soft 
has  that  sensual  realism  so  characteristic  of  all 
Tolstoi's  descriptions  of  bodily  sensations.  The 
book  is  a  work  of  art,  and  contains  many  reflections 
and  bitter  accusations  against  society  that  are 
founded  on  the  truth. 

The  moral  significance  of  the  story  is  perfectly 
clear  —  that  men  who  are  constantly  immoral  be- 
fore marriage  need  not  expect  happiness  in  mar- 
ried life.  It  is  a  great  pity  that  Tolstoi  did  not  let 
the  powerful  little  novel  speak  for  itself,  and  that  he 
allowed  himself  to  be  goaded  into  an  explanatory 
and  defensive  commentary  by  the  thousands  of 
enquiring  letters  from  foolish  readers.  Much  of 
the  commentary  contains  sound  advice,  but  it  leads 
off  into  that  reductio  ad  absurdum  so  characteristic 
of  Russian  thought. 

Many  of  the  tracts  and  parables  that  Tolstoi 


TOLSTOI 

wrote  are  true  works  of  art,  with  a  Biblical  direct- 
ness and  simplicity  of  style.  Their  effect  outside 
of  Russia  is  caused  fully  as  much  by  their  literary 
style  as  by  their  teaching.  I  remember  an  under- 
graduate, who,  reading  Where  Love  is  there  God  is 
Also,  said  that  he  was  tremendously  excited  when 
the  old  shoemaker  lost  his  spectacles,  and  had  no 
peace  of  mind  till  he  found  them  again.  This  is 
unconscious  testimony  to  Tolstoi's  power  of  mak- 
ing trivial  events  seem  real. 

The  long  novel,  Resurrection,  is,  as  Mr.  Maude, 
the  English  translator,  shows,  not  merely  a  story, 
but  a  general  summary  of  all  the  final  conclusions 
about  life  reached  by  its  author.  The  English  vol- 
ume actually  has  an  Index  to  Social  Questions, 
Types,  etc.,  giving  the  pages  where  the  author's 
views  on  all  such  topics  are  expressed  in  the  book. 
Apart  from  the  great  transformation  wrought  in 
the  character  of  the  hero,  which  is  the  motive  of  the 
work,  there  are  countless  passages  which  show  the 
genius  of  the  author,  still  burning  brightly  in  his  old 
age.  The  difference  between  the  Easter  kiss  and 
the  kiss  of  lust  is  one  of  the  most  powerful  instances 
of  analysis,  and  may  be  taken  as  a  symbol  of  the 
whole  work.  And  the  depiction  of  the  sportsman's 
feelings  when  he  brings  down  a  wounded  bird,  half 
shame  and  half  rage,  will  startle  and  impress  every 
man  who  has  carried  a  gun. 
213 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

Resurrection  teaches  directly  what  Tolstoi  always 
taught  —  what  he  taught  less  directly,  but  with 
even  greater  art,  in  Anna  Karenina. 

In  reading  this  work  of  his  old  age,  we  cannot  help 
thinking  of  what  Carlyle  said  of  the  octogenarian 
Goethe:  "See  how  in  that  great  mind,  beaming  in 
mildest  mellow  splendour,  beaming,  if  also  trem- 
bling, like  a  great  sun  on  the  verge  of  the  horizon, 
near  now  to  its  long  farewell,  all  these  things  were 
illuminated  and  illustrated." 


214 


VI 
GORKI 

GORKI  went  up  like  the  sky-rocket,  and  seems  to 
have  had  the  traditional  descent.  From  1900  to 
1906  everybody  was  talking  about  him ;  since  1906 
one  scarcely  hears  mention  of  his  name.  He  was 
ridiculously  overpraised,  but  he  ought  not  to  be  for- 
gotten. As  an  artist,  he  will  not  bear  a  moment's 
comparison  with  Andreev;  but  some  of  his  short 
stories  and  his  play,  The  Night  Asylum,  have  the 
genuine  Russian  note  of  reality,  and  a  rude  strength 
much  too  great  for  its  owner's  control.  He  has 
never  written  a  successful  long  novel,  and  his  plays 
have  no  coherence ;  but,  after  all,  the  man  has  the 
real  thing  —  vitality. 

Just  at  the  moment  when  Chekhov  appeared  to 
stand  at  the  head  of  young  Russian  writers,  Gorki 
appeared,  and  his  fame  swept  from  one  end  of  the 
world  to  the  other.  In  Russia,  his  public  was 
second  in  numbers  only  to  Tolstoi's ;  Kuprin  and 
Andreev  both  dedicated  books  to  him;  in  Ger- 
many, France,  England,  and  America,  he  became 
literally  a  household  word.  It  is  probable  that 
there  were  a  thousand  foreigners  who  knew  his 
name,  to  one  who  had  heard  of  Chekhov.  Com- 
215 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

pared  with  Chekhov,  he  had  more  matter  and  less 
art. 

His  true  name,  which  comparatively  few  have 
ever  heard,  is  Alexei  Maximovich  Peshkov. 
"This  name,"  said  M.  de  Vogue,  "will  remain  for- 
ever buried  in  the  parish  register."  He  chose  to 
write  under  the  name  Gorki,  which  means  "bitter," 
a  happy  appellation  for  this  modern  Ishmaelite. 
He  was  born  hi  1869,  at  Nizhni  Novgorod,  in  a  dyer's 
shop.  He  lost  both  father  and  mother  when  he 
was  a  child,  but  his  real  mother  was  the  river  Volga, 
on  whose  banks  he  was  born,  and  on  whose  broad 
breast  he  has  found  the  only  repose  he  understands. 
The  little  boy  was  apprenticed  to  a  shoemaker,  but 
ran  away,  as  he  did  from  a  subsequent  employer. 
By  a  curious  irony  of  fate,  this  atheist  learned  to 
read  out  of  a  prayer-book,  and  this  iconoclast  was 
for  a  time  engaged  in  the  manufacture  of  ikons,  holy 
images.  As  the  aristocrat  Turgenev  learned  Rus- 
sian from  a  house  servant,  Gorki  obtained  his  love 
for  literature  from  a  cook.  This  happened  on  a 
steamer  on  the  great  river,  where  Gorki  was  em- 
ployed as  an  assistant  in  the  galley.  The  cook  was 
a  rough  giant,  who  spent  all  his  spare  moments 
reading,  having  an  old  trunk  full  of  books.  It  was 
a  miscellaneous  assortment,  containing  Lives  of 
Saints,  stories  by  Dumas  pere,  and  fortunately 
some  works  by  Gogol.  This  literature  gave  him  a 
216 


GORKI 

thirst  for  learning,  and  when  he  was  sixteen  he  went 
to  Kazan,  a  town  on  the  Volga,  where  Tolstoi  had 
studied  at  the  University.  He  had  the  notion  that 
literature  and  learning  were  there  distributed  free 
to  the  famished,  like  bread  in  times  of  famine.  He 
was  quickly  undeceived;  and  instead  of  receiving 
intellectual  food,  he  was  forced  to  work  in  a  baker's 
shop,  for  a  miserable  pittance.  These  were  the 
darkest  days  of  his  life,  and  in  one  of  his  most 
powerful  stories  he  has  reflected  the  wretched  daily 
and  nightly  toil  in  a  bakery. 

Then  he  went  on  the  road,  and  became  a  tramp, 
doing  all  kinds  of  odd  jobs,  from  peddling  to  hard 
manual  labour  on  wharves  and  railways.  At  the 
age  of  nineteen,  weary  of  life,  he  shot  himself,  but 
recovered.  Then  he  followed  the  Volga  to  the 
Black  Sea,  unconsciously  collecting  the  material  that 
in  a  very  few  years  he  was  to  give  to  the  world. 
In  1892,  when  twenty-three  years  old,  he  succeeded 
in  getting  some  of  his  sketches  printed  in  news- 
papers. The  next  year  he  had  the  good  fortune 
to  meet  at  Nizhni  Novgorod  the  famous  Russian 
author  Korolenko.  Korolenko  was  greatly  im- 
pressed by  the  young  vagabond,  believed  in  his 
powers,  and  gave  timely  and  valuable  help.  With 
the  older  man's  influence,  Gorki  succeeded  in  ob- 
taining the  entree  to  the  St.  Petersburg  magazines ; 
and  while  the  Russian  critics  were  at  a  loss  how  to 
217 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

regard  the  new  genius,  the  public  went  wild.  He 
visited  the  capital  in  1899,  and  there  was  intense 
curiosity  to  see  and  to  hear  him.  A  great  hall  was 
engaged,  and  when  he  mounted  the  platform  to 
read,  the  young  people  in  the  audience  went  into  a 
frenzy. 

Gorki  has  been  repeatedly  imprisoned  for  his 
revolutionary  ideas  and  efforts ;  in  1906,  at  the  very 
apex  of  his  fame,  he  came  to  the  United  States  to 
collect  funds  for  the  cause.  The  whole  country 
was  eager  to  receive  and  to  give,  and  his  advent  in 
New  York  was  a  notable  occasion.  He  insisted 
that  he  came,  not  as  an  anarchist,  but  as  a  socialist, 
that  his  mission  in  the  world  was  not  to  destroy,  but 
to  fulfil.  At  first,  he  was  full  of  enthusiasm  about 
America  and  New  York,  and  American  writers; 
he  was  tremendously  impressed  by  the  sky-scrapers, 
by  the  intense  activity  of  the  people,  and  by  the 
Hudson  River,  which,  as  he  regarded  from  his  hotel 
windows,  reminded  him  of  the  Volga.  He  said 
America  would  be  the  first  nation  to  give  mankind 
a  true  government,  and  that  its  citizens  were  the 
incarnation  of  progress.  He  declared  that  Mark 
Twain  was  even  more  popular  in  Russia  than  in 
America,  that  it  was  "a  part  of  the  national  Rus- 
sian education"  to  read  him,  and  that  he  himself 
had  read  every  translation  of  his  books. 

Incidentally  he  spoke  of  his  favourite  world- 
218 


GORKI 

authors.  Shakespeare  he  put  first  of  all,  saying  he 
was  "staggering,"  an  opinion  quite  different  from 
that  of  Tolstoi.  Schopenhauer  and  Nietzsche  were 
the  philosophers  he  liked  the  best.  Byron  and 
Heine  he  read  in  preference  to  most  other  poets, 
for  there  is  an  invincible  strain  of  lyric  romanticism 
in  this  Russian  tramp,  as  there  was  in  his  master 
Gogol.  Flaubert,  Goethe,  and  Dumas  pere  he 
read  with  delight. 

A  literary  dinner  was  arranged  in  honour  of  the 
distinguished  guest,  and  inasmuch  as  all  present 
were  ignorant  of  the  next  day's  catastrophe,  the 
account  given  of  this  love-feast  in  the  New  York  Sun 
is  worth  quoting.  "Mark  Twain  and  Gorki  recog- 
nised each  other  before  they  were  introduced,  but 
neither  being  able  to  understand  the  language  of 
the  other,  they  simply  grasped  hands  and  held  on 
more  than  a  minute.  .  .  .  Gorki  said  he  had  read 
Mark  Twain's  stories  when  he  was  a  boy,  and  that 
he  had  gotten  much  delight  from  them.  Mark 
declared  that  he  also  had  been  a  reader  and  admirer 
of  Gorki.  The  smile  of  Gorki  was  broader  and  not 
so  dry  as  the  smile  of  Mark,  but  both  smiles  were 
distinctly  those  of  fellow-humorists  who  understood 
each  other.  Gorki  made  a  little  speech  which  was 
translated  by  a  Russian  who  knew  English.  Gorki 
said  he  was  glad  to  meet  Mark  Twain,  'world  fa- 
mous and  in  Russia  the  best  known  of  American 
219 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

writers,  a  man  of  tremendous  force  and  convictions, 
who,  when  he  hit,  hit  hard.  I  have  come  to 
America  to  get  acquainted  with  the  American  people 
and  ask  their  aid  for  my  suffering  countrymen  who 
are  fighting  for  liberty.  The  despotism  must  be 
overthrown  now,  and  what  is  needed  is  money, 
money,  money ! '  Mark  said  he  was  glad  to  meet 
Gorki,  adding,  'If  we  can  help  to  create  the  Russian 
republic,  let  us  start  in  right  away  and  do  it.  The 
fighting  may  have  to  be  postponed  awhile,  but 
meanwhile  we  can  keep  our  hearts  on  the  matter 
and  we  can  assist  the  Russians  in  being  free.' " 

A  committee  was  formed  to  raise  funds,  and  then 
came  the  explosion,  striking  evidence  of  the  enor- 
mous difference  between  the  American  and  the 
Continental  point  of  view  in  morals.  With  charac- 
teristic Russian  impracticability,  Gorki  had  come 
to  America  with  a  woman  whom  he  introduced  as 
his  wife ;  but  it  appeared  that  his  legal  wife  was  in 
Russia,  and  that  his  attractive  and  accomplished 
companion  was  somebody  else.  This  fact,  which 
honestly  seemed  to  Gorki  an  incident  of  no  impor- 
tance, took  on  a  prodigious  shape.  This  single 
mistake  cost  the  Russian  revolutionary  cause  an 
enormous  sum  of  money,  and  may  have  altered 
history.  Gorki  was  expelled  from  his  hotel,  and  re- 
fused admittance  to  others;  unkindest  cut  of  all, 
Mark  Twain,,  whose  absence  of  religious  belief  had 


GORKI 

made  Gorki  believe  him  to  be  altogether  emanci- 
pated from  prejudices,  positively  refused  to  have 
anything  more  to  do  with  him.  As  Gorki  had  said, 
"When  Mark  Twain  hit,  he  hit  hard."  Turn  whither 
he  would,  every  door  was  slammed  in  his  face.  I 
do  not  think  he  has  ever  recovered  from  the  blank 
amazement  caused  by  the  American  change  of 
front.  His  golden  opportunity  was  gone,  and  he 
departed  for  Italy,  shaking  the  dust  of  America  off 
his  feet,  and  roundly  cursing  the  nation  that  he  had 
just  declared  to  be  the  incarnation  of  progress. 
The  affair  unquestionably  has  its  ludicrous  side, 
but  it  was  a  terrible  blow  to  the  revolutionists. 
Many  of  them  believed  that  the  trap  was  sprung 
by  the  government  party. 

Gorki's  full-length  novels  are  far  from  successful 
works  of  art.  They  have  all  the  incoherence  and 
slipshod  workmanship  of  Dostoevski,  without  the 
latter's  glow  of  brotherly  love.  His  first  real 
novel,  Foma  Gordeev,  an  epic  of  the  Volga,  has 
many  beautiful  descriptive  passages,  really  lyric 
and  idyllic  in  tone,  mingled  with  an  incredible 
amount  of  drivel.  The  character  who  plays  the 
title-r61e  is  a  typical  Russian  windbag,  irresolute 
and  incapable,  like  so  many  Russian  heroes;  but 
whether  drunk  or  sober,  he  is  destitute  of  charm. 
He  is  both  dreary  and  dirty.  The  opening  chapters 
are  written  with  great  spirit,  and  the  reader  is 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

full  of  happy  expectation.  One  goes  farther  and 
fares  worse.  After  the  first  hundred  pages,  the 
book  is  a  prolonged  anti-climax,  desperately  dull. 
Altogether  the  best  passage  in  the  story  is  the 
description  of  the  river  in  spring,  impressive  not 
merely  for  its  beauty  and  accuracy  of  language, 
but  because  the  Volga  is  interpreted  as  a  symbol 
of  the  spirit  of  the  Russian  people,  with  vast  but 
unawakened  possibilities. 

"Between  them,  in  a  magnificent  sweep,  flowed 
the  broad-breasted  Volga;  triumphantly,  without 
haste,  flow  her  waters,  conscious  of  their  uncon- 
querable power ;  the  hill-shore  was  reflected  in 
them  like  a  dark  shadow,  but  on  the  left  side  she 
was  adorned  with  gold  and  emerald  velvet  by  the 
sandy  borders  of  the  reefs,  and  the  broad  meadows. 
Now  here,  now  there,  on  the  hills,  and  in  the 
meadows,  appeared  villages,  the  sun  sparkled  in 
the  window-panes  of  the  cottages,  and  upon  the 
roofs  of  yellow  straw;  the  crosses  of  the  churches 
gleamed  through  the  foliage  of  the  trees,  the  gray 
wings  of  the  mills  rotated  lazily  through  the  air,  the 
smoke  from  the  chimneys  of  a  factory  curled  sky- 
ward in  thick  black  wreaths.  ...  On  all  sides 
was  the  gleaming  water,  on  all  sides  were  space 
and  freedom,  cheerfully  green  meadows,  and  gra- 
ciously clear  blue  sky;  in  the  quiet  motion  of 
the  water,  restrained  power  could  be  felt;  in  the 


GORKI 

heaven  above  it  shone  the  beautiful  sun,  the  air 
was  saturated  with  the  fragrance  of  evergreen 
trees,  and  the  fresh  scent  of  foliage.  The  shores 
advanced  in  greeting,  soothing  the  eye  and  the 
soul  with  their  beauty,  and  new  pictures  were 
constantly  unfolded  upon  them. 

"On  everything  round  about  rested  the  stamp 
of  a  certain  sluggishness:  everything  —  nature 
and  people  —  lived  awkwardly,  lazily ;  but  in  this 
laziness  there  was  a  certain  peculiar  grace,  and 
it  would  seem  that  behind  the  laziness  was  con- 
cealed a  huge  force,  an  unconquerable  force,  as 
yet  unconscious  of  itself,  not  having,  as  yet,  created 
for  itself  clear  desires  and  aims.  And  the  absence 
of  consciousness  in  this  half-somnolent  existence 
cast  upon  its  whole  beautiful  expanse  a  shade  of 
melancholy.  Submissive  patience,  the  silent  ex- 
pectation of  something  new  and  more  active  was 
audible  even  in  the  call  of  the  cuckoo,  as  it  flew  with 
the  wind  from  the  shore,  over  the  river."  1 

The  novel  Varenka  Olessova  is  a  tedious  book  of 
no  importance.  The  hero  is,  of  course,  the  eternal 
Russian  type,  a  man  of  good  education  and  no 
backbone:  he  lacks  resolution,  energy,  will-power, 
and  will  never  accomplish  anything.  He  has  not 
even  force  enough  to  continue  his  studies.  Con- 
trasted with  him  is  the  girl  Varenka,  a  simple 

1  Isabel  Hapgood's  translation. 
223 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

child  of  nature,  who  prefers  silly  romances  to 
Russian  novels,  and  whose  virgin  naivete  is  a  con- 
stant puzzle  to  the  conceited  ass  who  does  not 
know  whether  he  is  in  love  with  her  or  not.  In- 
deed, he  asks  himself  if  he  is  capable  of  love  for 
any  one.  The  only  interesting  pages  in  this  stupid 
story  are  concerned  with  a  discussion  on  reading, 
between  Varenka  and  the  young  man,  where  her 
denunciation  of  Russian  fiction  is,  of  course,  meant 
to  proclaim  its  true  superiority.  In  response  to 
the  question  whether  she  reads  Russian  authors, 
the  girl  answers  with  conviction:  "Oh,  yes!  But 
I  don't  like  them !  They  are  so  tiresome,  so  tire- 
some !  They  always  write  about  what  I  know 
already  myself,  and  know  just  as  well  as  they  do. 
They  can't  create  anything  interesting;  with  them 
almost  everything  is  true.  .  .  .  Now  with  the 
French,  their  heroes  are  real  heroes,  they  talk  and 
act  unlike  men  in  actual  life.  They  are  always 
brave,  amorous,  vivacious,  while  our  heroes  are 
simple  little  men,  without  any  warm  feelings, 
without  any  beauty,  pitiable,  just  like  ordinary 
men  in  real  life.  ...  In  Russian  books,  one 
cannot  understand  at  all  why  the  men  continue 
to  live.  What's  the  use  of  writing  books  if  the 
author  has  nothing  remarkable  to  say?" 

The  long  novel  Mother  is  a  good  picture  of  life 
among  the  working-people  in  a  Russian  factory, 
224 


GORKI 

that  is,  life  as  seen  through  Gorki's  eyes ;  all  cheer- 
fulness and  laughter  are,  of  course,  absent,  and  we 
have  presented  a  dull  monotone  of  misery.  The 
factory  itself  is  the  villain  of  the  story,  and  re- 
sembles some  grotesque  wild  beast,  that  daily  de- 
vours the  blood,  bone,  and  marrow  of  the  throng 
of  victims  that  enter  its  black  jaws.  The  men, 
women,  and  children  are  represented  as  utterly 
brutalised  by  toil;  in  their  rare  moments  of 
leisure,  they  fight  and  beat  each  other  unmerci- 
fully, and  even  the  little  children  get  dead  drunk. 
Socialist  and  revolutionary  propaganda  are  secretly 
circulated  among  these  stupefied  folk,  and  much 
of  the  narrative  is  taken  up  with  the  difficulties 
of  accomplishing  this  distribution;  for  the  whole 
book  itself  is  nothing  but  a  revolutionary  tract. 
The  characters,  including  the  pitiful  Mother  her- 
self, are  not  vividly  drawn,  they  are  not  alive,  and 
one  forgets  them  speedily ;  as  for  plot,  there  is  none, 
and  the  book  closes  with  the  brutal  murder  of  the 
old  woman.  It  is  a  tedious,  inartistic  novel,  with 
none  of  the  relief  that  would  exist  in  actual  life. 
Turgenev's  poorest  novel,  Virgin  Soil,  which  also 
gives  us  a  picture  of  a  factory,  is  immensely  superior 
from  every  point  of  view. 

But  if  Mother  is  a  dull  book,  The  Spy  is  impossible. 
It  is  full  ormeaningless  and  unutterably  dreary  jar- 
gon ;  its  characters_are  sodden  with  alcohol  and  best- 
Q  225 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

ial  lusts.  One  abominable  woman's  fat  body  spreads 
out  on  an  arm-chair  "  like  sour  dough."  And 
indeed,  this  novel  bears  about  the  same  relation  to 
a  finished  work  of  art  that  sour  dough  bears  to 
a  good  loaf  of  bread.  The  characters  are  poorly 
conceived,  and  the  story  is  totally  without  move- 
ment. Not  only  is  it  very  badly  written,  it  lacks 
even  good  material.  The  wretched  boy,  whose 
idiotic  states  of  mind  are  described  one  after  the 
other,  and  whose  eventual  suicide  is  clear  from  the 
start,  is  a  disgusting  whelp,  without  any  human 
interest.  One  longs  for  his  death  with  murderous 
intensity,  and  when,  on  the  last  page,  he  throws 
himself  under  the  train,  the  reader  experiences  a 
calm  and  sweet  relief. 

Much  of  Gorki's  work  is  like  Swift's  poetry, 
powerful  not  because  of  its  cerebration  or  spiritual 
force,  but  powerful  only  from  the  physical  point 
of  view,  from  its  capacity  to  disgust.  It  appeals 
to  the  nose  and  the  stomach  rather  than  to  the 
mind  and  the  heart.  From  the  medicinal  stand- 
point, it  may  have  a  certain  value.  Swift  sent 
a  lady  one  of  his  poems,  and  immediately  after 
reading  it,  she  was  taken  violently  sick.  Not  every 
poet  has  sufficient  force  to  produce  so  sudden  an 
effect. 

One  man,  invariably  before  reading  the  works 
of  a  famous  French  author,  put  on  his  overshoes. 
226 


GORKI 

A  distinguished  American  novelist  has  said  that 
in  Gorki  "seems  the  body  without  the  soul  of 
Russian  fiction,  and  sodden  with  despair.  The 
soul  of  Russian  fiction  is  the  great  thing."  This 
is,  indeed,  the  main  difference  between  his  work 
and  that  of  the  giant  Dostoevski.  In  the  latter's 
darkest  scenes  the  spiritual  flame  is  never  extinct. 

Gorki  lacks  either  the  patient  industry  or  else 
the  knowledge  necessary  to  make  a  good  novel. 
He  is  seen  at  his  best  in  short  stories,  for  his  power 
comes  in  flashes.  In  Twenty-six  Men  and  a  Girl, 
the  hideous  tale  that  gave  him  his  reputation  in 
America,  one  is  conscious  of  the  streak  of  genius 
that  he  undoubtedly  possesses.  The  helpless,  im- 
potent rage  felt  by  the  wretched  men  as  they 
witness  the  debauching  of  a  girl's  body  and  the 
damnation  of  her  soul,  is  clearly  echoed  in  the 
reader's  mind.  Gorki's  notes  are  always  the  most 
thrilling  when  played  below  the  range  of  the  con- 
ventional instrument  of  style.  This  is  not  low  life, 
it  is  sub-life. 

He  is,  after  all,  a  student  of  sensational  effect; 
and  the  short  story  is  peculiarly  adapted  to  his 
natural  talent.  He  cannot  develop  characters,  he 
cannot  manage  a  large  group,  or  handle  a  progres- 
sive series  of  events.  But  in  a  lurid  picture  of  the 
pit,  in  a  flash-light  photograph  of  an  underground 
den,  in  a  sudden  vision  of  a  heap  of  garbage  with 
227 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

unspeakable  creatures  crawling  over  it,  he  is  im- 
pressive. 

I  shall  never  forget  the  performance  of  The  Night 
Asylum,  Nachtasyl,  which  I  saw  acted  in  Munich 
by  one  of  the  best  stock  companies  in  the  world, 
a  combination  of  players  from  the  Neues  and 
Kleines  theaters  in  Berlin.  In  reading  this  utterly 
formless  and  incoherent  drama,  I  had  been  only 
slightly  affected;  but  when  it  was  presented  on 
the  stage  by  actors  who  intelligently  incarnated 
every  single  character,  the  thing  took  on  a  terrible 
intensity.  The  persons  are  all,  except  old  Luka, 
who  talks  like  a  man  in  one  of  Tolstoi's  recent 
parables,  dehumanised.  The  woman  dying  of 
consumption  before  our  eyes,  the  Baron  in  an  ad- 
vanced stage  of  paresis  who  continually  rolls 
imaginary  cigarettes  between  his  weak  fingers, 
and  the  alcoholic  actor  who  has  lost  his  memory 
are  impossible  to  forget.  I  can  hear  that  actor 
now,  as  with  stupid  fascination  he  continually 
repeats  the  diagnosis  a  physician  once  made  of  his 
case :  "  Mein  Organismus  ist  durch  und  durch  mil 
Akoolvergiftet!" 

Gorki,  in  spite  of  his  zeal  for  the  revolutionary 
cause,  has  no  remedy  for  the  disease  he  calls  Life. 
He  is  eaten  up  with  rage  at  the  world  in  general, 
and  tries  to  make  us  all  share  his  disgust  with  it. 
But  he  teaches  us  nothing;  he  has  little  to  say  that 
228 


GORKI 

we  can  transmute  into  anything  valuable.  This 
is  perhaps  the  reason  why  the  world  has  tempora- 
rily, at  any  rate,  lost  interest  in  him.  He  was  a 
new  sensation,  he  shocked  us,  and  gave  us  strange 
thrills,  after  the  manner  of  new  and  unexpected 
sensations.  Gorki  came  up  on  the  literary  horizon 
like  an  evil  storm,  darkening  the  sky,  casting 
an  awful  shadow  across  the  world's  mirth  and 
laughter,  and  making  us  shudder  in  the  cold  and 
gloom. 

Gorki  completely  satisfied  that  strange  but 
almost  universal  desire  of  well-fed  and  comfort- 
able people  to  go  slumming.  In  his  books  men  and 
women  in  fortunate  circumstances  had  their  curi- 
osity satisfied  —  all  the  world  went  slumming,  with 
no  discomfort,  no  expense,  and  no  fear  of  contagion. 
With  no  trouble  at  all,  no  personal  inconvenience, 
we  learned  the  worst  of  all  possible  worsts  on  this 
puzzling  and  interesting  planet. 

But  we  soon  had  enough  of  it,  and  our  experienced 
and  professional  guide  failed  to  perceive  the  fact. 
He  showed  us  more  of  the  same  thing,  and  then 
some  more.  Such  sights  and  sounds  —  authentic 
visions  and  echoes  of  hell  —  merely  repeated,  be- 
gan to  lose  their  uncanny  fascination.  The  man 
who  excited  us  became  a  bore.  For  the  worst 
thing  about  Gorki  is  his  dull  monotony,  and  vice 
is  even  more  monotonous  than  virtue,  perhaps 
229 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

because  it  is  more  common.  Open  the  pages  of 
almost  any  of  his  tales,  it  is  always  the  same 
thing,  the  same  criminals,  the  same  horrors,  the 
same  broken  ejaculations  and  brutish  rage.  Gorki 
has  shown  no  capacity  for  development,  no  power 
of  variety  and  complexity.  His  passion  for  mere 
effect  has  reacted  unfavourably  on  himself.1 

Is  it  possible  that  success  robbed  him  of  some- 
thing ?  He  became  a  popular  author  in  conven- 
tional environment,  surrounded  by  books  and  mod- 
ern luxuries,  living  in  the  pleasant  climate  of  Italy, 
with  no  anxiety  about  his  meals  and  bed.  Is  it 
possible  that  wealth,  comfort,  independence,  and 
leisure  have  extinguished  his  original  force  ?  Has 
he  lost  something  of  the  picturesque  attitude  of 
Gorki  the  penniless  tramp  ?  He  is  happily  still  a 
young  man,  and  perhaps  he  may  yet  achieve  the 
masterpiece  that  ten  years  ago  we  so  confidently 
expected  from  his  hands. 

He  is  certainly  not  a  great  teacher,  but  he  has  the 
power  to  ask  awkward  questions  so  characteristic 
of  Andreev,  Artsybashev,  and  indeed  of  all  Russian 
novelists.  We  cannot  answer  him  with  a  shrug  of 
the  shoulders  or  a  sceptical  smile.  He  shakes  the 

1  His  play  Die  Letzten  was  put  on  at  the  Deutsches  Theater,  Ber- 
lin, 6  September  1910.  The  press  despatch  says,  "The  father  is  a 
police  inspector,  drunkard,  gambler,  briber,  bribe-taker,  adulterer, 
and  robber." 


GORKI 

foundations  of  our  fancied  security  by  boldly 
questioning  what  we  had  come  to  regard  as  axioms. 
As  the  late  M.  de  Vogue  remarked,  when  little 
children  sit  on  our  knee  and  pelt  us  with  questions 
that  go  to  the  roots  of  our  philosophy,  we  get  rid 
of  the  bother  of  it  by  telling  the  children  to  go 
away  and  play;  but  when  a  Tolstoi  puts  such 
questions,  we  cannot  get  rid  of  him  so  easily.  Rus- 
sian novelists  are  a  thorn  in  the  side  of  complacent 
optimism. 

And  yet  surely,  if  life  is  not  so  good  as  it  conceiv- 
ably might  be,  it  is  not  so  darkly  bitter  as  the  Bitter 
One  would  have  us  believe.  In  a  short  article  that  he 
wrote  about  one  of  the  playgrounds  of  America,  he 
betrayed  his  own  incurable  jaundice.  In  the  New 
York  Independent  for  8  August  1907,  Gorki  pub- 
lished a  brilliant  impressionistic  sketch  of  Coney 
Island,  and  called  it  Boredom.  Gorki  at  Coney 
Island  is  like  Dante  at  a  country  fair.  Thomas 
Carlyle  was  invited  out  to  a  social  dinner-party  once 
upon  a  time,  and  when  he  came  home  he  wrote 
savagely  in  his  diary  of  the  flippant,  light-hearted 
conversation  among  the  men  and  women  about  the 
festive  board,  saying,  "to  me  through  those  thin 
cobwebs  Death  and  Eternity  sat  glaring."  What 
a  charming  guest  he  must  have  been  on  that  par- 
ticular occasion ! 

Gorki  speaks  poetically  in  his  article  of  the 
231 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

"fantastic  city  all  of  fire"  that  one  sees  at  night. 
But  as  he  mingles  with  the  throng,  disgust  fills 
his  lonely  heart. 

"The  public  looks  at  them  silently.  It  breathes 
in  the  moist  air,  and  feeds  its  soul  with  dismal  ennui, 
which  extinguishes  thought  as  a  wet,  dirty  cloth 
extinguishes  the  fire  of  a  smouldering  coal." 

Describing  the  sensations  of  the  crowd  before  the 
tiger's  cage,  he  says :  — 

"The  man  runs  about  the  cage,  shoots  his 
pistol  and  cracks  his  whip,  and  shouts  like  a  mad- 
man. His  shouts  are  intended  to  hide  his  painful 
dread  of  the  animals.  The  crowd  regards  the  capers 
of  the  man,  and  waits  in  suspense  for  the  fatal 
attack.  They  wait;  unconsciously  the  primitive 
instinct  is  awakened  in  them.  They  crave  fight, 
they  want  to  feel  the  delicious  shiver  produced  by 
the  sight  of  two  bodies  intertwining,  the  splutter 
of  blood  and  pieces  of  torn,  steaming  human  flesh 
flying  through  the  cage  and  falling  on  the  floor. 
They  want  to  hear  the  roar,  the  cries,  the  shrieks 
of  agony.  .  .  .  Then  the  crowd  breaks  into  dark 
pieces,  and  disperses  over  the  slimy  marsh  of 
boredom. 

"...  You  long  to  see  a  drunken  man  with  a 
jovial  face,  who  would  push  and  sing  and  bawl, 
happy  because  he  is  drunk,  and  sincerely  wishing 
all  good  people  the  same.  .  .  . 
232 


GORKI 

"In  the  glittering  gossamer  of  its  fantastic  build- 
ings, tens  of  thousands  of  grey  people,  like  patches 
on  the  ragged  clothes  of  a  beggar,  creep  along  with 
weary  faces  and  colourless  eyes.  .  .  . 

"But  the  precaution  has  been  taken  to  blind  the 
people,  and  they  drink  in  the  vile  poison  with 
silent  rapture.  The  poison  contaminates  their 
souls.  Boredom  whirls  about  in  an  idle  dance, 
expiring  in  the  agony  of  its  inanition. 

"One  thing  alone  is  good  in  the  garish  city :  you 
can  drink  in  hatred  to  your  soul's  content,  hatred 
sufficient  to  last  throughout  life,  hatred  of  the 
power  of  stupidity!" 

This  sketch  is  valuable  not  merely  because  of 
the  impression  of  a  distinguished  foreign  writer 
of  one  of  the  sights  of  America,  but  because  it 
raises  in  our  minds  an  obstinate  doubt  of  his  capac- 
ity to  tell  the  truth  about  life  in  general.  Suppose 
a  person  who  had  never  seen  Coney  Island  should 
read  Gorki's  vivid  description  of  it,  would  he  really 
know  anything  about  Coney  Island?  Of  course 
not.  The  crowds  at  Coney  Island  are  as  different 
from  Gorki's  description  of  them  as  anything  could 
well  be.  Now  then,  we  who  know  the  dregs  of 
Russian  life  only  through  Gorki's  pictures,  can  we 
be  certain  that  his  representations  are  accurate? 
Are  they  reliable  history  of  fact,  or  are  they  the  rev- 
elations of  a  heart  that  knoweth  its  own  bitterness  ? 
233 


vn 

CHEKHOV 

ANTON  PAVLOVICH  CHEKHOV,  like  Pushkin,  Ler- 
montov,  Bielinski,  and  Garshin,  died  young,  and 
although  he  wrote  a  goodly  number  of  plays  and 
stories  which  gave  him  a  high  reputation  in  Russia, 
he  did  not  live  to  enjoy  international  fame.  This 
is  partly  owing  to  the  nature  of  his  work,  but  more 
perhaps  to  the  total  eclipse  of  other  contemporary 
writers  by  Gorki.  There  are  signs  now  that  his 
delicate  and  unpretentious  art  will  outlast  the 
sensational  flare  of  the  other's  reputation.  Gorki 
himself  has  generously  tried  to  help  in  the  perpetua- 
tion of  Chekhov's  name,  by  publishing  a  volume  of 
personal  reminiscences  of  his  dead  friend. 

Like  Gogol  and  Artsybashev,  Chekhov  was  a  man 
of  the  South,  being  born  at  Taganrog,  a  seaport  on 
a  gulf  of  the  Black  Sea,  near  the  mouth  of  the  river 
Don.  The  date  of  his  birth  is  the  17  January  1860. 
His  father  was  a  clever  serf,  who,  by  good  business 
foresight,  bought  his  freedom  early  in  life.  Al- 
though the  father  never  had  much  education  him- 
self, he  gave  his  four  children  every  possible  advan- 
tage. Anton  studied  in  the  Greek  school  in  his 
native  city,  and  then  entered  the  Faculty  of  Medi- 
234 


CHEKHOV 

cine  at  the  University  of  Moscow.  "I  don't  well 
remember  why  I  chose  the  medical  faculty,"  he  re- 
marked later,  "but  I  never  regretted  that  choice." 
He  took  his  degree,  but  entered  upon  no  regular 
practice.  For  a  year  he  worked  in  a  hospital  in  a 
small  town  near  Moscow,  and  in  1892  he  freely 
offered  his  medical  services  during  an  epidemic  of 
cholera.  His  professional  experiences  were  of  im- 
mense service  to  him  in  analysing  the  characters  of 
various  patients  whom  he  treated,  and  his  scientific 
training  he  always  believed  helped  him  greatly  in 
the  writing  of  his  stories  and  plays,  which  are  all 
psychological  studies. 

He  knew  that  he  had  not  very  long  to  live,  for 
before  he  had  really  begun  his  literary  career  signs 
of  tuberculosis  had  plainly  become  manifest.  He 
died  in  Germany,  the  2  July  1904,  and  his  funeral 
at  Moscow  was  a  national  event. 

Chekhov  was  a  fine  conversationalist,  and  fond 
of  society ;  despite  the  terrible  gloom  of  his  stories, 
he  had  distinct  gifts  as  a  wit,  and  was  a  great  favour- 
ite at  dinner-parties  and  social  gatherings.  He 
joked  freely  on  his  death-bed.  He  was  warm- 
hearted and  generous,  and  gave  money  gladly  to 
poor  students  and  overworked  school-teachers.  His 
innate  modesty  and  lack  of  self-assertion  made  him 
very  slow  at  personal  advertisement,  and  his  dis- 
like of  Tolstoi's  views  prevented  at  first  an  acquaint- 
335 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

ance  with  the  old  sage.  Later,  however,  Tolstoi, 
being  deeply  interested  in  him,  sought  him  out, 
and  the  two  writers  became  friends.  At  this  time 
many  Russians  believed  that  Chekhov  was  the 
legitimate  heir  to  Tolstoi's  fame. 

In  1879,  while  still  in  the  University  of  Moscow, 
Chekhov  began  to  write  short  stories,  of  a  more  or 
less  humorous  nature,  which  were  published  in 
reviews.  His  first  book  appeared  in  1887.  Some 
critics  sounded  a  note  of  warning,  which  he  heeded. 
They  said  "it  was  too  bad  that  such  a  talented 
young  man  should  spend  all  his  time  making 
people  laugh."  This  indirect  advice,  coupled  with 
maturity  of  years  and  incipient  disease,  changed  the 
writer's  point  of  view,  and  his  best  known  work  is 
typically  Russian  in  its  tragic  intensity. 

In  Russia  he  enjoyed  an  enormous  vogue.  Kro- 
potkin  says  that  his  works  ran  through  ten  to  four- 
teen editions,  and  that  his  publications,  appearing 
as  a  supplement  to  a  weekly  magazine,  had  a  cir- 
culation of  two  hundred  thousand  copies  in  one  year. 
Toward  the  end  of  his  life  his  stories  captivated 
Germany,  and  one  of  the  Berlin  journalists  cried 
out,  as  the  Germans  have  so  often  of  Oscar  Wilde, 
"Chekhov  und  kein  Ende!  " 

Chekhov,  like  Gorki  and  Andreev,  was  a  drama- 
tist as  well  as  a  novelist,  though  his  plays  are  only 
beginning  to  be  known  outside  of  his  native  land. 
236 


CHEKHOV 

They  resemble  the  dramatic  work  of  Gorki,  An- 
dreev,  and  for  that  matter  of  practically  all  Russian 
playwrights,  in  being  formless  and  having  no  true 
movement;  but  they  contain  some  of  his  best 
Russian  portraits,  and  some  of  his  most  subtle 
interpretations  of  Russian  national  life.  Russian 
drama  does  not  compare  for  an  instant  with  Russian 
fiction  :  I  have  never  read  a  single  well-constructed 
Russian  play  except  Revizor.  Most  of  them  are  dull 
to  a  foreign  reader,  and  leave  him  cold  and  weary. 
Mr.  Baring,  in  his  book  Landmarks  in  Russian 
Literature,  has  an  excellent  chapter  on  the  plays  of 
Chekhov,  which  partially  explains  the  difficulties 
an  outsider  has  in  studying  Russian  drama.  But 
this  chapter,  like  the  other  parts  of  his  book,  is 
marred  by  exaggeration.  He  says,  "Chekhov's 
plays  are  as  interesting  to  read  as  the  work  of  any 
first-rate  novelist."  And  a  few  sentences  farther  in 
the  same  paragraph,  he  adds,  "Chekhov's  plays 
are  a  thousand  times  more  interesting  to  see  on  the 
stage  than  they  are  to  read."  Any  one  who  believes 
Mr.  Baring's  statement,  and  starts  to  read  Chek- 
hov's dramas  with  the  faith  that  they  are  as  interest- 
ing as  Anna  Karenina,  will  be  sadly  disappointed. 
And  if  on  the  stage  they  are  a  thousand  times  more 
interesting  to  see  than  Anna  Karenina  is  to  read, 
they  must  indeed  be  thrilling.  It  is,  however,  per- 
fectly true  that  a  foreigner  cannot  judge  the  real 
23? 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

value  of  Russian  plays  by  reading  them.  We  ought 
to  hear  them  performed  by  a  Russian  company. 
That  wonderful  actress,  Madame  Komisarzhev- 
skaya,  who  was  lately  followed  to  her  grave  by  an 
immense  concourse  of  weeping  Russians,  gave  a 
performance  of  The  Cherry  Garden  which  stirred  the 
whole  nation.  Madame  Nazimova  has  said  that 
Chekhov  is  her  favourite  writer,  but  that  his  plays 
could  not  possibly  succeed  in  America,  unless  every 
part,  even  the  minor  ones,  could  be  interpreted  by  a 
brilliant  actor. 

Chekhov  is  durch  und  durch  echt  russisch:  no  one 
but  a  Russian  would  ever  have  conceived  such 
characters,  or  reported  such  conversations.  We 
often  wonder  that  physical  exercise  and  bodily 
recreation  are  so  conspicuously  absent  from  Russian 
books.  But  we  should  remember  that  a  Russian 
conversation  is  one  of  the  most  violent  forms  of 
physical  exercise,  as  it  is  among  the  French  and 
Italians.  Although  Chekhov  belongs  to  our  day, 
and  represents  contemporary  Russia,  he  stands  in 
the  middle  of  the  highway  of  Russian  fiction, 
and  in  his  method  of  art  harks  back  to  the  great 
masters.  He  perhaps  resembles  Turgenev  more 
than  any  other  of  his  predecessors,  but  he  is  only 
a  faint  echo.  He  is  like  Turgenev  in  the  delicacy 
and  in  the  aloofness  of  his  art.  He  has  at  times  that 
combination  of  the  absolutely  real  with  the  abso- 
238 


CHEKHOV 

lutely  fantastic  that  is  so  characteristic  of  Gogol : 
one  of  his  best  stories,  The  Black  Monk,  might  have 
been  written  by  the  author  of  The  Cloak  and  The 
Portrait.  He  is  like  Dostoevski  in  his  uncompro- 
mising depiction  of  utter  degradation ;  but  he  has 
little  of  Dostoevski's  glowing  sympathy  and  heart- 
power.  He  resembles  Tolstoi  least  of  all.  The  two 
chief  features  of  Tolstoi's  work  —  self-revelation  and 
moral  teaching — must  have  been  abhorrent  to  Chek- 
hov, for  his  stories  tell  us  almost  nothing  about  him- 
self and  his  own  opinions,  and  they  teach  nothing. 
His  art  is  impersonal,  and  he  is  content  with  mere 
diagnosis .  His  only  point  of  contact  with  Tolstoi  is 
his  grim  fidelity  to  detail,  the  peculiar  Russian  realism 
common  to  every  Russian  novelist.  Tolstoi  said 
that  Chekhov  resembled  Guy  de  Maupassant. 
This  is  entirely  wide  of  the  mark.  He  resembles 
Guy  de  Maupassant  merely  in  the  fact  that,  like 
the  Frenchman,  he  wrote  short  stories. 

Among  recent  writers  Chekhov  is  at  the  farthest 
remove  from  his  friend  Gorki,  and  most  akin  to 
Andreev.  It  is  probable  that  Andreev  learned 
something  from  him.  Unlike  Turgenev,  both 
Chekhov  and  Andreev  study  mental  disease. 
Their  best  characters  are  abnormal ;  they  have  some 
fatal  taint  in  the  mind  which  turns  this  goodly 
frame,  the  earth,  into  a  sterile  promontory;  this 
majestical  roof  fretted  with  golden  fire,  into  a  foul 
'  239 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

and  pestilent  congregation  of  vapours.  Neither 
Chekhov  nor  Andreev  have  attempted  to  lift  that 
black  pall  of  despair  that  hangs  over  Russian 
fiction. 

Just  as  the  austere,  intellectual  beauty  of  Greek 
drama  forms  striking  evidence  of  the  extraordina- 
rily high  average  of  culture  in  Athenian  life,  so  the 
success  of  an  author  like  Chekhov  is  abundant 
proof  of  the  immense  number  of  readers  of  truly 
cultivated  taste  that  are  scattered  over  Holy 
Russia.  For  Chekhov's  stories  are  exclusively  in- 
tellectual and  subtle.  They  appeal  only  to  the 
mind,  not  to  the  passions  nor  to  any  love  of  sen- 
sation. In  many  of  them  he  deliberately  avoids 
climaxes  and  all  varieties  of  artificial  effect.  He 
would  be  simply  incomprehensible  to  the  millions 
of  Americans  who  delight  in  musical  comedy  and  in 
pseudo-historical  romance.  He  wrote  only  for  the 
elect,  for  those  who  have  behind  them  years  of 
culture  and  habits  of  consecutive  thought.  That 
such  a  man  should  have  a  vogue  in  Russia  such  as 
a  cheap  romancer  enjoys  in  America,  is  in  itself  a 
significant  and  painful  fact. 

Chekhov's  position  in  the  main  line  of  Russian 
literature  and  his  likeness  to  Turgenev  are  both 
evident  when  we  study  his  analysis  of  the  Russian 
temperament.  His  verdict  is  exactly  the  same 
as  that  given  by  Turgenev  and  Sienkiewicz  —  slave 
240 


CHEKHOV 

improductivite.  A  majority  of  his  chief  characters 
are  Rudins.  They  suffer  from  internal  injuries, 
caused  by  a  diseased  will.  In  his  story  called  On 
the  Way  the  hero  remarks,  "Nature  has  set  in 
every  Russian  an  enquiring  mind,  a  tendency  to 
speculation,  and  extraordinary  capacity  for  belief; 
but  all  these  are  broken  into  dust  against  our  im- 
providence, indolence,  and  fantastic  triviality" 1 

The  novelist  who  wrote  that  sentence  was  a 
physician  as  well  as  a  man  of  letters.  It  is  a  pro- 
fessional diagnosis  of  the  national  sickness  of  mind, 
which  produces  sickness  of  heart. 

It  is  absurd  to  join  in  the  chorus  that  calls  Tur- 
genev  old-fashioned,  when  we  find  his  words  ac- 
curately, if  faintly,  echoed  by  a  Russian  who  died 
hi  1904  !  Hope  springs  eternal  in  the  human  breast, 
and  wishes  have  always  been  the  legitimate  fathers 
of  thoughts.  My  friend  and  colleague,  Mr.  Mandell, 
the  translator  of  The  Cherry  Garden,2  says  that  the 
play  indicates  that  the  useless  people  are  dying 
away,  "and  thus  making  room  for  the  regenerated 
young  generation  which  is  full  of  hope  and  strength 
to  make  a  fruitful  cherry  garden  of  Russia  for 
the  Russian  people  .  .  .  the  prospects  of  real- 
isation are  now  bright.  But  how  soon  will  this 
become  a  practical  reality?  Let  us  hope  in  the 

1The  citations  from  Chekhov  are  from  the  translations  by  Long. 
1  Published  at  Yale  University  by  the  Yale  Courant. 
R  241 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

near  future ! "  Yes,  let  us  hope,  as  Russians 
hoped  in  1870  and  in  1900.  Kropotkin  says  that 
Chekhov  gave  an  "impressive  parting  word"  to 
the  old  generation,  and  that  we  are  now  on  the 
eve  of  the  "new  types  which  already  are  budding  in 
life."  Gorki  has  violently  protested  against  the 
irresolute  Slav,  and  Artsybashev  has  given  us  in 
Jurii  the  Russian  as  he  is  (1903)  and  in  Sanin  the 
Russian  as  he  ought  to  be.  But  a  disease  ob- 
stinately remains  a  disease  until  it  is  cured,  and 
it  cannot  be  cured  by  hope  or  by  protest. 

Chekhov  was  a  physician  and  an  invalid;  he 
saw  sickness  without  and  sickness  within.  Small 
wonder  that  his  stories  deal  with  the  unhealthy 
and  the  doomed.  For  just  as  Artsybashev's 
tuberculosis  has  made  him  create  the  modern 
Tamburlaine  as  a  mental  enjoyment  of  physical 
activity,  so  the  less  turbulent  nature  of  Chekhov 
has  made  him  reproduce  in  his  creatures  of  the 
imagination  his  own  sufferings  and  fears.  I  think 
he  was  afraid  of  mental  as  well  as  physical  decay, 
for  he  has  studied  insanity  with  the  same  assiduity 
as  that  displayed  by  Andreev  in  his  nerve-wrecking 
story  A  Dilemma. 

In  Ward  No.  6,  which  no  one  should  read  late  at 

night,  Chekhov  has  given  us  a  picture  of  an  insane 

asylum,  which,  if  the  conditions  there  depicted  are 

true  to  life,  would  indicate  that  some  parts  of  Russia 

242 


CHEKHOV 

have  not  advanced  one  step  since  Gogol  wrote 
Revizor.  The  patients  are  beaten  and  hammered 
into  insensibility  by  a  brutal  keeper;  they  live 
amidst  intolerable  filth.  The  attending  physician 
is  a  typical  Russian,  who  sees  clearly  the  horror  and 
abomination  of  the  place,  but  has  not  sufficient 
will-power  to  make  a  change.  He  is  fascinated 
by  one  of  the  patients,  with  whom  he  talks  for  hours. 
His  fondness  for  this  man  leads  his  friends  to  be- 
lieve that  he  is  insane,  and  they  begin  to  treat  him 
with  that  humouring  condescension  and  pity 
which  would  be  sufficient  in  itself  to  drive  a  man 
out  of  his  mind.  He  is  finally  invited  by  his 
younger  colleague  to  visit  the  asylum  to  examine 
a  strange  case;  when  he  reaches  the  building,  he 
himself  is  shoved  into  Ward  No.  6,  and  realises 
that  the  doors  are  shut  upon  him  forever.  He  is 
obliged  to  occupy  a  bed  in  the  same  filthy  den 
where  he  has  so  often  visited  the  other  patients, 
and  his  night-gown  has  a  slimy  smell  of  dried  fish. 
In  about  twenty-four  hours  he  dies,  but  in  those 
hours  he  goes  through  a  hell  of  physical  and  mental 
torment. 

The  fear  of  death,  which  to  an  intensely  intel- 
lectual people  like  the  Russians,  is  an  obsession 
of  terror,  and  shadows  all  their  literature, — it 
appears  all  through  Tolstoi's  diary  and  novels, — is 
analysed  in  many  forms  by  Chekhov.  In  Ward 
•  343 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

No.  6  Chekhov  pays  his  respects  to  Tolstoi's  creed 
of  self-denial,  through  the  lips  of  the  doctor's  fa- 
vourite madman.  "A  creed  which  teaches  indiffer- 
ence to  wealth,  indifference  to  the  conveniences 
of  life,  and  contempt  for  suffering  is  quite  incom- 
prehensible to  the  great  majority  who  never  knew 
either  wealth  or  the  conveniences  of  life,  and  to 
whom  contempt  for  suffering  would  mean  contempt 
for  their  own  lives,  which  are  made  up  of  feelings 
of  hunger,  cold,  loss,  insult,  and  a  Hamlet-like  terror 
of  death.  All  life  lies  in  these  feelings,  and  life 
may  be  hated  or  wearied  of,  but  never  despised. 
Yes,  I  repeat  it,  the  teachings  of  the  Stoics  can 
never  have  a  future ;  from  the  beginning  of  time, 
life  has  consisted  in  sensibility  to  pain  and  response 
to  irritation." 

No  better  indictment  has  ever  been  made  against 
those  to  whom  self-denial  and  renunciation  are 
merely  a  luxurious  attitude  of  the  mind. 

Chekhov's  sympathy  with  Imagination  and 
his  hatred  for  commonplace  folk  who  stupidly  try 
to  repress  its  manifestations  are  shown  again  and 
again  in  his  tales.  He  loves  especially  the  imag- 
ination of  children ;  and  he  shows  them  as  infi- 
nitely wiser  than  their  practical  parents.  In  the 
short  sketch  An  Event  the  children  are  wild  with 
delight  over  the  advent  of  three  kittens,  and  cannot 
understand  their  father's  disgust  for  the  little 
244 


CHEKHOV 

beasts,  and  his  cruel  indifference  to  their  welfare. 
The  cat  is  their  mother,  that  they  know;  but  who 
is  the  father  ?  The  kittens  must  have  a  father, 
so  the  children  drag  out  the  wooden  rocking-horse, 
and  place  him  beside  his  wife  and  offspring. 

In  the  story  At  Home  the  father's  bewilderment 
at  the  creative  imagination  and  the  curious  caprices 
of  his  little  boy's  mind  is  tenderly  and  beautifully 
described.  The  father  knows  he  is  not  bringing 
him  up  wisely,  but  is  utterly  at  a  loss  how  to  go  at 
the  problem,  having  none  of  the  intuitive  sympathy 
of  a  woman.  The  boy  is  busy  with  his  pencil,  and 
represents  sounds  by  shapes,  letters  by  colours. 
For  example,  "the  sound  of  an  orchestra  he  drew 
as  a  round,  smoky  spot;  whistling  as  a  spiral 
thread."  In  making  letters,  he  always  painted 
L  yellow,  M  red,  and  A  black.  He  draws  a  picture 
of  a  house  with  a  soldier  standing  in  front  of  it. 
The  father  rebukes  him  for  bad  perspective,  and 
tells  him  that  the  soldier  in  his  picture  is  taller 
than  the  house.  But  the  boy  replies,  "If  you 
drew  the  soldier  smaller,  you  wouldn't  be  able  to 
see  his  eyes." 

One  of  Chekhov's  favourite  pastimes  was  garden- 
ing. This,  perhaps,  accounts  for  his  location  of 
the  scene  in  his  comedy  The  Cherry  Garden,  where 
a  business-like  man,  who  had  once  been  a  serf, 
just  like  the  dramatist's  own  father,  has  prospered 
245 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

sufficiently  to  buy  the  orchard  from  the  improvi- 
dent and  highly  educated  owners ;  and  for  all  the 
details  about  fruit-gardening  given  in  the  power- 
ful story  The  Black  Monk.  This  story  infallibly 
reminds  one  of  Gogol.  A  man  has  repeatedly  a 
vision  of  a  black  monk,  who  visits  him  through 
the  air,  with  whom  he  carries  on  long  conversa- 
tions, and  who  inspires  him  with  great  thoughts 
and  ideals.  His  wife  and  friends  of  course  think 
he  is  crazy,  and  instead  of  allowing  him  to  con- 
tinue his  intercourse  with  the  familiar  spirit,  they 
persuade  :him  he  is  ill,  and  make  him  take  medi- 
cine. The  result  is  wholesale  tragedy.  His  life 
is  ruined,  his  wife  is  separated  from  him ;  at  last 
he  dies.  The  idea  seems  to  be  that  he  should  not 
have  been  disobedient  unto  the  heavenly  vision. 
Imagination  and  inspiration  are  necessary  to  life; 
they  are  what  separate  man  from  the  beasts  that 
perish.  The  monk  asks  him,  "How  do  you  know 
that  the  men  of  genius  whom  all  the  world  trusts 
have  not  also  seen  visions  ?  " 

Chekhov  is  eternally  at  war  with  the  practical, 
with  the  narrow-minded,  with  the  commonplace. 
Where  there  is  no  vision,  the  people  perish. 

Professor  Bruckner  has  well  said  that  Chekhov 

was  by  profession  a  physician,  but  an  artist  by  the 

grace  of  God.     He  was  indeed  an  exquisite  artist, 

and  if  his  place  in  Russian  literature  is  not  large, 

246 


CHEKHOV 

it  seems  permanent.  He  does  not  rank  among 
the  greatest.  He  lacks  the  tremendous  force  of 
Tolstoi,  the  flawless  perfection  of  Turgenev,  and 
the  mighty  world-embracing  sympathy  of  Great- 
heart  Dostoevski.  But  he  is  a  faithful  interpreter 
of  Russian  life,  and  although  his  art  was  objective, 
one  cannot  help  feeling  the  essential  goodness  of 
the  man  behind  his  work,  and  loving  him  for  it. 


247 


VIII 
ARTSYBASHEV 

NOT  the  greatest,  but  the  most  sensational, 
novel  published  in  Russia  during  the  last  five 
years  is  Sanin,  by  Artsybashev.  It  is  not  sen- 
sational in  the  incidents,  though  two  men  commit 
suicide,  and  two  girls  are  mined ;  it  is  sensational 
in  its  ideas.  To  make  a  sensation  in  contemporary 
Russian  literature  is  an  achievement,  where  pa- 
thology is  now  rampant.  But  Artsybashev  accom- 
plished it,  and  his  novel  made  a  tremendous  noise, 
the  echoes  of  which  quickly  were  heard  all  over 
curious  and  eclectic  Germany,  and  have  even 
stirred  Paris.  Since  the  failure  of  the  Revolution, 
there  has  been  a  marked  revolt  in  Russia  against 
three  great  ideas  that  have  at  different  times  dom- 
inated Russian  literature:  the  quiet  pessimism  of 
Turgenev,  the  Christian  non-resistance  religion  of 
Tolstoi,  and  the  familiar  Russian  type  of  will-less 
philosophy.  Even  before  the  Revolution  Gorki 
had  expressed  the  spirit  of  revolt ;  but  his  position, 
extreme  as  it  appears  to  an  Anglo-Saxon,  has  been 
left  far  behind  by  Artsybashev,  who,  with  the 
genuine  Russian  love  of  the  reductio  ad  dbsurdum, 
248 


ARTSYBASHEV 

has  reached  the  farthest  limits  of  moral  anarchy 
in  the  creation  of  his  hero  Sanin. 

In  an  admirable  article  in  the  Westminster  Ga- 
zette, for  14  May  1910,  by  the  accomplished  scholar 
and  critic,  Mr.  R.  C.  Long,  called  The  Literature 
of  Self-assertion,  we  obtain  a  strong  smell  of  the 
hell-broth  now  boiling  in  Russian  literature.  "In 
the  Spring  of  1909,  an  exhibition  was  held  in  the 
Russian  ministry  of  the  Interior  of  specimen  copies 
of  all  books  and  brochures  issued  in  1908,  to  the 
number  of  70,841,000.  How  many  different  books 
were  exhibited  the  writer  does  not  know,  but  he 
lately  came  upon  an  essay  by  the  critic  Ismailoff, 
in  which  it  was  said  that  there  were  on  exhibition 
a  thousand  different  sensational  novels,  classed  as 
'Nat  Pinkerton  and  Sherlock  Holmes  literature,' 
with  such  expressive  titles  as  'The  Hanged,'  'The 
Chokers,'  'The  Corpse  Disinterred,'  and  'The  Ex- 
propriators.' Ismailoff  comments  on  this  as  sign 
and  portent.  Russia  always  had  her  literature 
of  adventure,  and  Russian  novels  of  manners  and 
of  psychology  became  known  to  Westerners  merely 
because  they  were  the  best,  and  by  no  means  be- 
cause they  were  the  only  books  that  appeared.  The 
popular  taste  was  formerly  met  with  na'ive  and 
outrageous  '  lubotchniya  '-books.  The  new  craze 
for  'Nat  Pinkerton  and  Sherlock  Holmes'  stories 
is  something  quite  different.  It  foreshadows  a 
249 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

complete  change  in  the  psychosis  of  the  Russian 
reader,  the  decay  of  the  literature  of  passivity, 
and  the  rise  of  a  new  literature  of  action  and 
physical  revolt.  The  literature  of  passivity  reached 
its  height  with  the  (sic)  Chekhov.  The  best  rep- 
resentative of  the  transition  from  Chekhov  to  the 
new  literature  of  self-assertion  is  Maxim  Gorki's 
friend,  Leonid  Andreev.  .  .  . 

"These  have  got  clear  away  from  the  humble, 
ineffectual  individual,  'crushed  by  life.'  Full  of 
learned  philosophies  from  Max  Stirner  and  Nietz- 
sche, they  preach,  in  Stirner's  words,  'the  abso- 
lute independence  of  the  individual,  master  of 
himself,  and  of  all  things.'  'The  death  of  "Every- 
day-ism," '  the  'resurrection  of  myth,'  'orgiasm,' 
'Mystical  Anarchism,'  and  'universalist  individual- 
ism' are  some  of  the  shibboleths  of  these  new 
writers,  who  are  mostly  very  young,  very  clever, 
and  profoundly  convinced  that  they  are  even 
cleverer  than  they  are. 

"Anarchism,  posing  as  self-assertion,  is  the  note 
in  most  recent  Russian  literature,  as,  indeed,  it 
is  in  Russian  life." 

The  most  powerful  among  this  school  of  writers, 
and  the  only  one  who  can  perhaps  be  called  a  man 
of  genius,  is  Michael  Artsybashev.  He  came 
honestly  by  his  hot,  impulsive  temperament,  being, 
like  Gogol,  a  man  of  the  South.  He  was  born  in 
250 


ARTSYBASHEV 

1878.  He  says  of  himself:  "I  am  Tartar  in  name 
and  in  origin,  but  not  a  pure-blooded  one.  In  my 
veins  runs  Russian,  French,  Georgian,  and  Polish 
blood.  I  am  glad  to  name  as  one  of  my  ancestors 
the  famous  Pole,  Kosciusko,  who  was  my  maternal 
great-grandfather.  My  father,  a  retired  officer,  was 
a  landed  proprietor  with  very  little  income.  I  was 
only  three  years  old  when  my  mother  died.  As  a 
legacy,  she  bequeathed  to  me  tuberculosis.  ...  I 
am  now  living  in  the  Crimea  and  trying  to  get  well, 
but  with  little  faith  in  my  recovery." 

Sanin  appeared  at  the  psychological  moment,  late 
in  the  year  1907.  The  Revolution  was  a  failure, 
and  it  being  impossible  to  fight  the  government  or 
to  obtain  political  liberty,  people  in  Russia  of  all 
classes  were  ready  for  a  revolt  against  moral  law,  the 
religion  of  self-denial,  and  all  the  conventions  es- 
tablished by  society,  education,  and  the  church.  At 
this  moment  of  general  desperation  and  smouldering 
rage,  appeared  a  work  written  with  great  power 
and  great  art,  deifying  the  natural  instincts  of  man, 
incarnating  the  spirit  of  liberty  in  a  hero  who  de- 
spises all  so-called  morality  as  absurd  tyranny.  It 
was  a  bold  attempt  to  marshal  the  animal  in- 
stincts of  humanity,  terrifically  strong  as  they  are 
even  in  the  best  citizens,  against  every  moral  and 
prudential  restraint.  The  effect  of  the  book  will 
probably  not  last  very  long,  —  already  it  has  been 
251 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

called  an  ephemeral  sensation,  —  but  it  was  imme- 
diate and  tremendous.  It  was  especially  powerful 
among  university  students  and  high  school  boys 
and  girls  —  the  "  Sanin-morals  "  of  undergraduates 
were  alluded  to  in  a  speech  in  the  Duma. 

But  although  the  book  was  published  at  the 
psychological  moment,  it  was  written  with  no 
reference  to  any  post-revolution  spirit.  For  Artsy- 
bashev  composed  his  novel  in  1903,  when  he  was 
twenty-four  years  old.  He  tried  in  vain  to  induce 
publishers  to  print  it,  and  fortunately  for  him,  was 
obliged  to  wait  until  1907,  when  the  time  happened 
to  be  exactly  ripe. 

The  novel  has  been  allowed  to  circulate  in  Russia, 
because  it  shows  absolutely  no  sympathy  with  the 
Revolution  or  with  the  spirit  of  political  liberty. 
Men  who  waste  their  time  in  the  discussion  of 
political  rights  or  in  the  endeavour  to  obtain  them 
are  ridiculed  by  Sanin.  The  summum  bonum  is 
personal,  individual  happiness,  the  complete  grati- 
fication of  desire.  Thus,  those  who  are  working  for 
the  enfranchisement  of  the  Russian  people,  for 
relief  from  the  bureaucracy,  and  for  more  political 
independence,  not  only  have  no  sympathy  with  the 
book  —  they  hate  it,  because  it  treats  their  efforts 
with  contempt.  Some  of  them  have  gone  so  far  as 
to  express  the  belief  that  the  author  is  in  a  con- 
spiracy with  the  government  to  bring  ridicule  on 
252 


ARTSYBASHEV 

their  cause,  and  to  defeat  their  ever  living  hopes  of 
better  days.  However  this  may  be,  Sanin  is  not 
in  the  least  a  politically  revolutionary  book,  and 
critics  of  that  school  see  no  real  talent  or  literary 
power  in  its  pages. 

But,  sinister  and  damnable  as  its  tendency  is,  the 
novel  is  written  with  extraordinary  skill,  and  Artsy- 
bashev  is  a  man  to  be  reckoned  with.  The  style 
has  that  simplicity  and  directness  so  characteristic 
of  Russian  realism,  and  the  characters  are  by  no 
means  sign-posts  of  various  opinions;  they  are 
living  and  breathing  human  beings.  I  am  sorry 
that  such  a  book  as  Sanin  has  ever  been  written ; 
but  it  cannot  be  black-balled  from  the  republic  of 
letters. 

It  is  possible  that  it  is  a  florescence  not  merely  of 
the  author's  genius,  but  of  his  sickness.  The  glori- 
fication of  Sanin's  bodily  strength,  of  Karsavina's 
female  voluptuousness,  and  the  loud  call  to  physical 
joy  which  rings  through  the  work  may  be  an  ema- 
nation of  tuberculosis  as  well  as  that  of  healthy 
mental  conviction.  Shut  out  from  active  happi- 
ness, Artsybashev  may  have  taken  this  method  of 
vicarious  delight. 

The  bitterness  of  his  own  enforced  resignation  of 

active  happiness  and  the  terror  inspired  by  his  own 

disease  are   incarnated  in  a  decidedly  interesting 

character,  Semionov,  who,  although  still  able  to  walk 

253 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

about  when  we  first  see  him,  is  dying  of  consump- 
tion. He  has  none  of  the  hopefulness  and  cheerful- 
ness so  often  symptomatic  of  that  malady;  he  is 
peevish,  irritable,  and  at  times  enraged  by  contact 
with  his  healthy  friends.  After  a  frightful  attack 
of  coughing,  he  says:  "  I  often  think  that  soon  I 
shall  be  lying  in  complete  darkness.  You  under- 
stand, with  my  nose  fallen  in  and  my  limbs  decayed. 
And  above  me,  where  you  are  on  the  earth,  every- 
thing will  go  on,  exactly  as  it  does  now,  while  I  still 
am  permitted  to  see  it.  You  will  be  living  then, 
you  will  look  at  this  very  moon,  you  will  breathe, 
you  will  pass  over  my  grave ;  perhaps  you  will  stop 
there  a  moment  and  despatch  some  necessity. 
And  I  shall  lie  and  become  rotten." 

His  death  at  the  hospital  in  the  night,  with  his 
friends  looking  on,  is  powerfully  and  minutely  de- 
scribed. The  fat,  stupid  priest  goes  through  the  last 
ceremonies,  and  is  dully  amazed  at  the  contempt 
he  receives  from  Sanin. 

Sanin's  beautiful  sister  Lyda  is  ruined  by  a 
worthless  but  entirely  conventional  officer.  Her 
remorse  on  finding  that  she  is  with  child  is  perfectly 
natural,  but  is  ridiculed  by  her  brother,  who  saves 
her  from  suicide.  He  is  not  in  the  least  ashamed  of 
her  conduct,  and  tells  her  she  has  no  reason  for  loss 
of  pride ;  indeed,  he  does  not  think  of  blaming  the 
officer.  He  is  ready  to  commit  incest  with  his  sister, 
254 


ARTSYBASHEV 

whose  physical  charm  appeals  to  him;  but  she  is 
not  sufficiently  emancipated  for  that,  so  he  advises 
her  to  get  married  with  a  friend  who  loves  her, 
before  the  child  is  born.  This  is  finally  satisfac- 
torily arranged.  Later,  Sanin,  not  because  he  dis- 
approves of  the  libertine  officer's  affair  with  his 
sister,  but  because  he  regards  the  officer  as  a  block- 
head, treats  him  with  scant  courtesy;  and  the 
officer,  hidebound  by  convention,  sees  no  way  out 
but  a  challenge  to  a  duel.  The  scene  when  the  two 
brother  officers  bring  the  formal  challenge  to  Sanin 
is  the  only  scene  in  the  novel  marked  by  genuine 
humour,  and  is  also  the  only  scene  where  we  are  in 
complete  sympathy  with  the  hero.  One  of  the  dele- 
gates has  all  the  stiff  courtesy  and  ridiculous  formal- 
ity which  he  regards  as  entirely  consistent  with  his 
errand ;  the  other  is  a  big,  blundering  fellow,  who 
has  previously  announced  himself  as  a  disciple  of 
Tolstoi.  To  Sam'n's  philosophy  of  life,  duelling  is 
as  absurd  as  religion,  morality,  or  any  other  stupid 
conventionality ;  and  his  cold,  ruthless  logic  makes 
short  work  of  the  polite  phrases  of  the  two  ambas- 
sadors. Both  are  amazed  at  his  positive  refusal  to 
fight,  and  hardly  know  which  way  to  turn;  the 
disciple  of  Tolstoi  splutters  with  rage  because 
Sanin  shows  up  his  inconsistency  with  his  creed; 
both  try  to  treat  him  like  an  outcast,  but  make  very 
little  progress.  Sanin  informs  them  that  he  will  not 
255 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

fight  a  duel,  because  he  does  not  wish  to  take  the 
officer's  life,  and  because  he  does  not  care  to  risk  his 
own ;  but  that  if  the  officer  attempts  any  physical 
attack  upon  him  in  the  street,  he  will  thrash  him 
on  the  spot.  Enraged  and  bewildered  by  Sanin's 
unconventional  method  of  dealing  with  the  diffi- 
culty, the  discomfited  emissaries  withdraw.  Later, 
the  challenger  meets  Sanin  in  the  street,  and  goaded 
to  frenzy  by  his  calm  and  contemptuous  stare, 
strikes  him  with  a  whip;  he  immediately  receives 
in  the  face  a  terrible  blow  from  his  adversary's  fist, 
delivered  with  all  his  colossal  strength.  A  friend 
carries  him  to  his  lodgings,  and  there  he  commits 
suicide.  From  the  conventional  point  of  view, 
this  was  the  only  course  left  to  him. 

In  direct  contrast  to  most  Russian  novels,  the 
man  here  is  endowed  with  limitless  power  of  will, 
and  the  women  characterised  by  weakness.  The 
four  women  in  the  story,  Sanin's  sister  Lyda,  the 
pretty  school-teacher  Karsavina,  Jurii's  sister,  en- 
gaged to  a  young  scientist,  who  during  the  engage- 
ment cordially  invites  her  brother  to  accompany 
him  to  a  house  of  ill-fame,  and  the  mother  of  Sanin, 
are  all  thoroughly  conventional,  and  are  meant  to 
be.  They  are  living  under  what  Sanin  regards  as 
the  tyranny  of  social  convention.  He  treats  his 
mother's  shocked  amazement  with  brutal  scorn ;  he 
ridicules  Lyda's  shame  at  being  enceinte;  he  seduces 
256 


ARTSYBASHEV 

Karsavina,  at  the  very  time  when  she  is  in  love 
with  Jurii,  and  reasons  with  cold  patience  against 
her  subsequent  remorse.  It  is  clear  that  Artsy- 
bashev  believes  that  for  some  time  to  come  women 
will  not  accept  the  gospel  of  uncompromising  egoism. 
The  most  interesting  character  in  the  book,  apart 
from  the  hero,  is  Jurii,  who  might  easily  have  been  a 
protagonist  hi  one  of  Turgenev's  tragedies.  He  is 
the  typical  Russian,  the  highly  educated  young 
man  with  a  diseased  will.  He  is  characterised  by 
that  indecision  which  has  been  the  bane  of  so  many 
Russians.  All  through  the  book  he  seeks  in  vain 
for  some  philosophy  of  life,  some  guiding  principle. 
He  has  abandoned  faith  in  religion,  his  former  en- 
thusiasm for  political  freedom  has  cooled,  but  he 
simply  cannot  live  without  some  leading  Idea.  He 
is  an  acute  sufferer  from  that  mental  sickness 
diagnosed  by  nearly  all  writers  of  Russia.  He  en- 
vies and  at  the  same  time  despises  Sanin  for  his 
cheerful  energy.  Finally,  unable  to  escape  from  the 
perplexities  of  his  own  thinking,  he  commits  suicide. 
His  friends  stand  about  his  grave  at  the  funeral, 
and  one  of  them  foolishly  asks  Sanin  to  make  some 
appropriate  remarks.  Sanin,  who  always  says  ex- 
actly what  he  thinks,  and  abhors  all  forms  of  hy- 
pocrisy, delivers  the  following  funeral  oration  — 
heartily  endorsed  by  the  reader  —  in  one  sentence : 
"The  world  has  now  one  blockhead  the  less." 

*  257 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

The  horror-stricken  consternation  of  his  friends 
fills  Sanin  with  such  scorn  that  he  leaves  the 
town,  and  we  last  see  him  in  an  open  field  hi  the 
country,  giving  a  glad  shout  of  recognition  to 
the  dawn. 

The  motto  that  Artsybashev  has  placed  at  the 
beginning  of  the  novel  is  taken  from  Ecclesiastes 
vii.  29:  "God  hath  made  man  upright:  but  they 
have  sought  out  many  inventions. "  This  same  text 
was  used  by  Kipling  as  the  title  of  one  of  his  books, 
but  used  naturally  in  a  quite  different  way.  The 
Devil  has  here  cited  Scripture  for  his  purpose.  The 
hero  of  the  novel  is  an  absolutely  sincere,  frank,  and 
courageous  Adwcatus  Didboli.  He  is  invariably 
calm  and  collected;  he  never  loses  his  temper  in  an 
argument;  he  questions  the  most  fundamental  be- 
liefs and  principles  with  remorseless  logic.  Two  of 
his  friends  are  arguing  about  Christianity;  "at 
least,"  says  one,  "you  will  not  deny  that  its  in- 
fluence has  been  good."  "I  don't  deny  that,"  says 
the  other.  Then  Sanin  remarks  quietly,  "But  I 
deny  it !"  and  he  adds,  with  a  calmness  provoking 
to  the  two  disputants,  "Christianity  has  played  an 
abominable  role  in  history,  and  the  name  of  Jesus 
Christ  will  for  some  time  yet  oppress  humanity  like 
a  curse." 

Sanin  insists  that  it  is  not  necessary  to  have  any 
theory  of  life,  or  to  be  guided  by  any  principle ; 
258 


ARTSYBASHEV 

that  God  may  exist  or  He  may  not ;  He  does  not  at 
any  rate  bother  about  us.  The  real  rational  life 
of  man  should  be  exactly  like  a  bird.  He  should  be 
controlled  wholly  by  the  desire  of  the  moment. 
The  bird  wishes  to  alight  on  a  branch,  and  so  he 
alights;  then  he  wishes  to  fly,  so  he  flies.  That  is 
rational,  declares  Sanin ;  that  is  the  way  men  and 
women  should  live,  without  principles,  without 
plans,  and  without  regrets.  Drunkenness  and 
adultery  are  nothing  to  be  ashamed  of,  nor  in  any 
sense  to  be  called  degrading.  Nothing  that  gives 
pleasure  can  ever  be  degrading.  The  love  of  strong 
drink  and  the  lust  for  woman  are  not  sins ;  in  fact, 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  sin.  These  passions  are 
manly  and  natural,  and  what  is  natural  cannot  be 
wrong.  There  is  in  Sanin's  doctrine  something  of 
Nietzsche  and  more  of  Rousseau. 

Sanin  himself  is  not  at  all  a  contemptible  charac- 
ter. He  is  not  argumentative  except  when  dragged 
into  an  argument ;  he  does  not  attempt  to  convert 
others  to  his  views.  He  has  the  inner  light  which 
we  more  often  associate  with  Christian  faith.  In 
the  midst  of  his  troubled  and  self-tortured  com- 
rades, Sanin  stands  like  a  pillar,  calm,  unshakable. 
He  has  found  absolute  peace,  absolute  harmony 
with  life.  He  thinks,  talks,  and  acts  exactly  as  he 
chooses,  without  any  regard  whatever  to  the  con- 
venience or  happiness  of  any  one  else.  There  is 
259 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

something  refreshing  about  this  perfectly  healthy, 
clear-eyed,  quiet,  composed,  resolute  man  —  whose 
way  of  life  is  utterly  unaffected  by  public  opinion, 
who  simply  does  not  care  a  straw  for  anything  or 
anybody  but  himself.  Thus  he  recognises  his 
natural  foe  in  Christianity,  in  the  person  of  Jesus 
Christ,  and  in  His  Russian  interpreter,  Leo  Tolstoi. 
For  if  Christianity  teaches  anything,  it  teaches  that 
man  must  live  contrary  to  his  natural  instincts. 
The  endeavour  of  all  so-called  "new  religions" 
is  rootless,  because  it  is  an  attempt  to  adapt  Chris- 
tianity to  modern  human  convenience.  Much 
better  is  Sanin's  way :  he  sees  clearly  that  no 
adaptation  is  possible,  and  logically  fights  Chris- 
tianity as  the  implacable  enemy  of  the  natural  man. 
There  are  many  indications  that  one  of  the  great 
battle-grounds  of  Christianity  in  the  near  future 
is  to  be  the  modern  novel.  For  many  years  there 
have  been  plenty  of  attacks  on  the  supernatural 
side  of  Christianity,  and  on  Christianity  as  a  reli- 
gion ;  nearly  all  its  opponents,  however,  have  treated 
its  ethics,  its  practical  teachings,  with  respect.  The 
novel  Sanin  is  perhaps  the  boldest,  but  it  is  only  one 
of  many  attacks  that  are  now  being  made  on  Chris- 
tianity as  a  system  of  morals ;  as  was  the  case  with 
the  Greeks  and  Romans,  scepticism  in  morals 
follows  hard  on  scepticism  in  religion.  Those  who 
believe  in  Christianity  ought  to  rejoice  in  this  open 
260 


ARTSYBASHEV 

and  fair  fight ;  they  ought  to  welcome  it  as  a  com- 
plete unmasking  of  the  foe.  If  the  life  according 
to  Sanin  is  really  practicable,  if  it  is  a  good  substi- 
tute for  the  life  according  to  the  Christian  Gospel, 
it  is  desirable  that  it  should  be  clearly  set  forth,  and 
its  working  capacity  demonstrated.  For  the  real 
test  of  Christianity,  and  the  only  one  given  by  its 
Founder,  is  its  practical  value  as  a  way  of  life. 
It  can  never  be  successfully  attacked  by  historical 
research  or  by  destructive  criticism  —  all  such 
attacks  leave  it  precisely  as  they  found  it.  Those 
who  are  determined  to  destroy  Christianity,  and 
among  its  relentless  foes  have  always  been  numbered 
men  of  great  courage  and  great  ability,  must  prove 
that  its  promises  of  peace  and  rest  to  those  who 
really  follow  it  are  false,  and  that  its  influence  on 
society  and  on  the  individual  is  bad. 


261 


IX 
ANDREEV 

LEONID  ANDREEV  is  at  this  moment  regarded 
by  many  Russians  as  the  foremost  literary  artist 
among  the  younger  school  of  writers.  He  was 
born  at  Orel,  the  birthplace  of  Turgenev,  in  1871, 
and  is  thus  only  two  years  younger  than  Gorki. 
He  began  life  as  a  lawyer  at  Moscow,  but  accord- 
ing to  his  own  statement,  he  had  only  one  case, 
and  lost  that.  He  very  soon  abandoned  law  for 
literature,  as  so  many  writers  have  done,  and  his 
rise  has  been  exceedingly  rapid.  He  was  ap- 
pointed police-court  reporter  on  the  Moscow  Courier, 
where  he  went  through  the  daily  drudgery  without 
attracting  any  attention.  But  when  he  published 
in  this  newspaper  a  short  story,  Gorki  sent  a  tele- 
gram to  the  office,  demanding  to  know  the  real 
name  of  the  writer  who  signed  himself  Leonid 
Andreev.  He  was  informed  that  the  signature 
was  no  pseudonym.  This  notice  from  Gorki  gave 
the  young  man  immediate  prominence.  Not  long 
after,  he  published  another  story  in  the  Russian 
periodical  Life;  into  the  editor's  rooms  dashed  the 
famous  critic  Merezhkovski,  who  enquired  whether 
262 


ANDREEV 

it  was  Chekhov  or  Gorki  that  had  selected  this 
assumed  name. 

Andreev  himself  says  that  he  has  learned  much 
from  Tolstoi,  the  great  Tolstoi  of  the  sixties  and 
seventies,  also  from  Nietzsche,  whom  he  reads  with 
enthusiasm,  and  whose  most  characteristic  book, 
Also  Sprach  Zarathustra,  he  translated  into  Russian. 
He  has  read  Poe  with  profit,  but  he  testifies  that 
his  greatest  teacher  in  composition  is  the  Bible. 
In  a  letter  to  a  young  admirer,  he  wrote:  "I  thank 
you  for  your  kind  dedication.  ...  I  note  that 
in  one  place  you  write  about  the  Bible.  Yes, 
that  is  the  best  teacher  of  all  —  the  Bible."  1 

Andreev  has  the  gift  of  admiration,  and  loves 
to  render  homage  where  homage  is  due,  having 
dedicated  his  first  book  to  Gorki,  and  his  story  of 
The  Seven  Who  Were  Hanged  to  Tolstoi.  His 
style,  while  marked  by  the  typical  yet  always 
startling  Russian  simplicity,  is  nevertheless  entirely 
his  own,  and  all  his  tales  and  plays  are  stamped 
by  powerful  individuality.  He  is  fast  becoming 
an  international  celebrity.  His  terrible  picture  of 
war,  The  Red  Laugh,  has  been  translated  into 
German,  French,  and  English,  two  of  his  dramas, 
Anathema  and  To  the  Stars,  have  been  published 

1  Most  of  the  biographical  information  in  this  paragraph  I 
have  taken  from  an  interesting  article  in  The  Independent  for 
29  July  1909,  by  Ivan  Lavretski. 
263 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

in  America,  and  other  of  his  short  stories  are  known 
everywhere  in  Germany. 

The  higher  the  scale  in  human  intelligence, 
the  more  horrible  and  the  more  ridiculous  does  war 
appear.  That  men  engaged  in  peaceful  and  in- 
tellectual pursuits  should  leave  their  families, 
their  congenial  work,  their  pleasant  associations, 
and  go  out  to  torture  and  murder  men  of  similar 
tastes  and  activities,  and  become  themselves  trans- 
formed into  hideous  wild  beasts,  has  a  combina- 
tion of  horror  and  absurdity  that  peculiarly  im- 
presses a  people  so  highly  sensitive,  so  thoroughly 
intellectual,  and  so  kind-hearted  as  the  Russians. 
All  Russian  war-literature,  and  there  is  much  of  it, 
points  back  to  Tolstoi's  Sevastopol,  where  the  great 
novelist  stripped  warfare  of  all  its  sentiment  and 
patriotic  glitter,  and  revealed  its  dull,  sordid  misery 
as  well  as  its  hellish  tragedies.  What  Tolstoi  did 
for  the  Crimean  War,  Garshin  did  for  the  war  with 
Turkey  in  the  seventies.  I  have  not  seen  it  men- 
tioned, but  I  suspect  that  Andreev  owes  much  to 
the  reading  of  this  brilliant  author.  Garshin  was 
an  unquestionable  genius ;  if  he  had  lived,  I  think 
he  might  have  become  the  real  successor  to  Tolstoi, 
a  title  that  has  been  bestowed  upon  Chekhov, 
Gorki,  and  Andreev,  and  has  not  yet  been  earned 
by  any  man.  But  like  nearly  all  Russian  authors, 
he  suffered  from  intense  melancholia,  and  in  1888 
264 


ANDREEV 

committed  suicide  at  the  age  of  thirty-three.  His 
short  story  Four  Days  on  the  Field  of  Slaughter 
first  brought  him  into  public  notice.  One  cannot 
read  Andreev's  Red  Laugh  to-day  without  thinking 
of  it. 

"On  the  edge  of  the  wood  there  was  visible  some- 
thing red,  floating  here  and  there.  Sidorov  fell 
suddenly  to  the  ground  and  stared  at  me  in  silence 
with  great,  terrified  eyes.  Out  of  his  mouth 
poured  a  stream  of  blood.  Yes,  I  remember  it 
very  well."  This  is  the  red  laugh  of  Andreev, 
though  until  the  appearance  of  his  book  it  lacked 
the  appropriate  name.  Garshin  describes  how  a 
Russian  soldier  stabs  a  Fellah  to  death  with  his 
bayonet,  and  then,  too  badly  injured  to  move, 
lies  for  four  days  and  nights,  in  shivering  cold  and 
fearful  heat,  beside  the  putrefying  corpse  of  his 
dead  antagonist.  "I  did  that.  I  had  no  wish  to 
do  it.  I  wished  no  one  evil,  as  I  left  home  for  the 
war.  The  thought  that  I  should  kill  a  man  did 
not  enter  my  head.  I  thought  only  of  my  own 
danger.  And  I  went  to  him  and  did  this.  Well, 
and  what  happened?  O  fool,  O  idiot!  This 
unfortunate  Egyptian  is  still  less  guilty.  Before 
they  packed  them  on  a  steamer  like  herrings  in  a 
box,  and  brought  them  to  Constantinople,  he  had 
never  heard  of  Russia,  or  of  Bulgaria.  They  told 
him  to  go  and  he  went." 
265 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

In  the  Diary  of  Private  Ivanov,  Garshin  gave 
more  pictures  of  the  hideous  suffering  of  war, 
with  a  wonderful  portrait  of  the  commander  of  the 
company,  who  is  so  harshly  tyrannical  that  his 
men  hate  him,  and  resolve  to  slay  him  in  the  battle. 
But  he  survives  both  open  and  secret  foes,  and  at 
the  end  of  the  conflict  they  find  him  lying  prostrate, 
his  whole  body  shaken  with  sobs,  and  saying 
brokenly,  "Fifty- two!  Fifty- two!"  Fifty- two 
of  his  company  had  been  killed,  and  despite  his 
cruelty  to  them,  he  had  loved  them  all  like  children. 

Garshin  wrote  other  tales,  among  them  a  poeti- 
cally beautiful  story  of  a  tree,  Attalea  Princeps, 
that  reminds  one  somewhat  of  Bjornson.  But  his 
chief  significance  is  as  a  truthful  witness  to  the 
meaningless  maiming  and  murder  of  war,  and  his 
attitude  is  precisely  similar  to  that  of  Andreev, 
and  both  follow  Tolstoi. 

Andreev's  Red  Laugh  ought  to  be  read  in  America 
as  a  contrast  to  our  numerous  war  stories,  where 
war  is  pictured  as  a  delightful  and  exciting  tourna- 
ment. This  book  has  not  a  single  touch  of  patriotic 
sentiment,  not  a  suggestion  of  "Hurrah  for  our 
side!"  The  soldiers  are  on  the  field  because  they 
were  sent  there,  and  the  uninjured  are  too  utterly 
tired,  too  tormented  with  lack  of  sleep,  too  hungry 
and  thirsty  to  let  out  a  single  whoop.  The  first 
sight  of  the  Red  Laugh  reminds  us  of  the  pictur- 
266 


ANDREEV 

esque  story  of  Napoleon's  soldier  that  Browning 
has  immortalised  in  the  Incident  of  the  French  Camp. 
Tolstoi  mentions  the  same  event  in  Sevastopol, 
and  his  version  of  it  would  have  pleased  Owen 
Wister's  Virginian  more  than  Browning's.  In 
Andreev  there  is  no  graceful  gesture,  no  French 
pose,  no  "smiling  joy";  but  there  is  the  nerve- 
shattering  red  laugh.  The  officer  who  tells  the 
story  in  the  first  half  of  the  book  narrates  how  a 
young  volunteer  came  up  to  him  and  saluted. 
The  appearance  of  his  face  was  so  tensely  white 
that  the  officer  enquires,  "Are  you  afraid?"  Sud- 
denly a  stream  of  blood  bursts  from  the  young  man's 
body,  and  his  deadly  pale  face  turns  into  something 
unspeakable,  a  toothless  laugh  —  the  red  laugh. 

In  this  gruesome  tale  of  the  realities  of  war, 
Andreev  has  given  shocking  physical  details  of  torn 
and  bleeding  bodies,  but  true  to  the  theme  that 
animates  all  his  books,  he  has  concentrated  the 
main  interest  on  the  Mind.  Soldiers  suffer  in  the 
flesh,  but  infinitely  more  in  the  mind.  War  points 
chiefly  not  to  the  grave,  nor  to  the  hospital,  but 
to  the  madhouse.  All  forms  of  insanity  are  bred 
by  the  horror  and  fatigue  of  the  marches  and 
battles:  many  shoot  themselves,  many  become 
raging  maniacs,  many  become  gibbering  idiots. 
Every  man  who  has  studied  warfare  knows  that 
the  least  of  all  perils  is  the  bullet  of  the  enemy,  for 
267 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

only  a  small  proportion  are  released  by  that.  The 
innumerable  and  subtle  forms  of  disease,  bred  by 
exposure  and  privation,  constitute  the  real  danger. 
Andreev  is  the  first  to  show  that  the  most  common 
and  awful  form  of  disease  among  Russian  soldiers 
is  the  disease  of  the  brain.  The  camp  becomes 
a  vast  madhouse,  with  the  peculiar  feature  that 
the  madmen  are  at  large.  The  hero  of  the  story 
loses  both  his  legs,  and  apparently  completely  re- 
covered in  health  otherwise,  returns  home  to  his 
family,  and  gazes  wistfully  at  his  bicycle.  A  sudden 
desire  animates  him  to  write  out  the  story  of  the 
Japanese  war;  in  the  process  he  becomes  insane 
and  dies.  His  brother  then  attempts  to  complete 
the  narrative  from  the  scattered,  confused  notes, 
but  to  his  horror,  whenever  he  approaches  the  desk, 
the  phantom  of  the  dead  man  is  ever  there,  busily 
writing:  he  can  hear  the  pen  squeak  on  the 
paper. 

No  more  terrible  protest  against  war  has  ever 
been  written  than  Andreev's  Red  Laugh.  It  shows 
not  merely  the  inexpressible  horror  of  the  battle- 
field and  the  dull,  weary  wretchedness  of  the  men 
on  the  march,  but  it  follows  out  the  farthest  rami- 
fications flowing  from  the  central  cause:  the 
constant  tragedies  in  the  families,  the  letters  re- 
ceived after  the  telegraph  has  announced  the  death 
of  the  writer,  the  insane  wretches  who  return  to 
268 


ANDREEV 

the  homes  they  left  in  normal  health,  the  whole 
accumulation  of  woe. 

The  first  two  words  of  the  book  are  Madness  and 
Horror!  and  they  might  serve  as  a  text  for  Andreev's 
complete  works.  There  seems  to  be  some  taint 
in  his  mind  which  forces  him  to  dwell  forever  on 
the  abnormal  and  diseased.  He  is  not  exactly 
decadent,  but  he  is  decidedly  pathological.  Pro- 
fessor Bruckner  has  said  of  Andreev's  stories, 
"I  do  not  recall  a  single  one  which  would  not  get 
fearfully  on  a  man's  nerves."  He  has  deepened 
the  universal  gloom  of  Russian  fiction,  not  by 
descending  into  the  slums  with  Gorki,  but  by  de- 
picting life  as  seen  through  the  strange  light  of  a 
decaying  mind.  He  has  often  been  compared, 
especially  among  the  Germans,  with  Edgar  Allan 
Poe.  But  he  is  really  not  in  the  least  like  Poe. 
Poe's  horrors  are  nearly  all  unreal  fantasies,  that 
vaguely  haunt  our  minds  like  the  shadow  of  a  dream. 
Andreev  is  a  realist,  like  his  predecessors  and  con- 
temporaries. His  style  is  always  concrete  and 
definite,  always  filled  with  the  sense  of  fact.  There 
is  almost  something  scientific  hi  his  collection  of 
incurables. 

The  most  cheerful  thing  he  has  written  is  perhaps 

The   Seven    Who  Were   Hanged.    This  is  horrible 

enough  to  bring  out  a  cold  sweat ;  but  it  is  redeemed, 

as  the  work  of  Dostoevski  is,  by  a  vast  pity  and 

269 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

sympathy  for  the  condemned  wretches.  This  is 
the  book  he  dedicated  to  Tolstoi,  in  recognition 
of  the  constant  efforts  of  the  old  writer  to  have 
capital  punishment  abolished.  No  sentimental 
sympathy  with  murderers  is  shown  here ;  he  carries 
no  flowers  to  the  cells  where  each  of  the  seven  in 
solitude  awaits  his  fate.  Nor  are  the  murderers 
in  the  least  degree  depicted  as  heroes  —  they  are 
all  different  men  and  women,  but  none  of  them 
resembles  the  Hero-Murderer  of  romance. 

The  motive  underlying  this  story  is  shown  plainly 
by  the  author  in  an  interesting  letter  which  he 
wrote  to  the  American  translator,  and  which  is 
published  at  the  beginning  of  the  book.  "The  mis- 
fortune of  us  all  is  that  we  know  so  little,  even 
nothing,  about  one  another  —  neither  about  the 
soul,  nor  the  life,  the  sufferings,  the  habits,  the 
inclinations,  the  aspirations,  of  one  another.  Litera- 
ture, which  I  have  the  honour  to  serve,  is  dear  to  me 
just  because  the  noblest  task  it  sets  before  itself 
is  that  of  wiping  out  boundaries  and  distances." 
That  is,  the  aim  of  Andreev,  like  that  of  all  prom- 
inent Russian  novelists,  is  to  study  the  secret  of 
secrets,  the  human  heart.  And  like  all  specialists 
in  humanity,  like  Browning,  for  example,  he  feels 
the  impossibility  of  success. 

"About  what's  under  lock  and  key, 
Man's  soul!" 
270 


ANDREEV 

Farther  on  in  his  letter,  we  read:  "My  task  was  to 
point  out  the  horror  and  the  iniquity  of  capital 
punishment  under  any  circumstances.  The  hor- 
ror of  capital  punishment  is  great  when  it  falls  to 
the  lot  of  courageous  and  honest  people  whose  only 
guilt  is  their  excess  of  love  and  the  sense  of  right- 
eousness—  in  such  instances,  conscience  revolts. 
But  the  rope  is  still  more  horrible  when  it  forms 
the  noose  around  the  necks  of  weak  and  ignorant 
people.  And  however  strange  it  may  appear,  I 
look  with  a  lesser  grief  and  suffering  upon  the  ex- 
ecution of  the  revolutionists,  such  as  Werner  and 
Musya,  than  upon  the  strangling  of  ignorant 
murderers,  miserable  in  mind  and  heart,  like 
Yanson  and  Tsiganok."  Spoken  like  Dostoevski ! 
These  seven  are  an  extraordinary  group,  ranging 
from  calm,  courageous,  enlightened  individuals  to 
creatures  of  such  dull  stupidity  that  one  wonders 
if  they  ever  once  were  men.  Each  spends  the  inter- 
vening days  in  his  cell  in  a  different  manner.  One 
goes  through  daily  exercises  of  physical  culture. 
One  receives  a  visit  from  his  father  and  mother, 
another  from  his  old  mother  alone.  There  is  not  a 
false  touch  in  the  sentiment  in  these  painful  scenes. 
The  midnight  journey  to  the  place  of  execution  is 
vividly  portrayed,  and  the  different  sensations  of 
each  of  the  seven  are  strikingly  indicated.  At  the 
last,  Musya,  who  is  a  typical  Russian  heroine  in  her 
271 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

splendid  resolution  and  boundless  tenderness,  be- 
comes the  soul  of  the  whole  party,  and  tries  to  help 
them  all  by  her  gentle  conduct  and  her  words  of 
love.  The  whole  spirit  of  this  book  is  profoundly 
Christian.  One  feels  as  if  he  were  taken  back  in 
history,  and  were  present  at  the  execution  of  a 
group  of  early  Christian  martyrs.  There  are 
thousands  of  women  in  Russia  like  Musya,  and  they 
are  now,  as  they  were  in  the  days  of  Turgenev,  the 
one  hope  of  the  country. 

In  Merezhkovski's  interesting  work  Tolstoi  as 
Man  and  Artist,  the  author  says:  "We  are  accus- 
tomed to  think  that  the  more  abstract  thought  is, 
the  more  cold  and  dispassionate  it  is.  It  is  not  so ; 
or  at  least  it  is  not  so  with  us.  From  the  heroes  of 
Dostoevski  we  may  see  how  abstract  thought  may 
be  passionate,  how  metaphysical  theories  and  de- 
ductions are  rooted,  not  only  in  cold  reason,  but 
in  the  heart,  emotions,  and  will.  There  are  thoughts 
which  pour  oil  on  the  fire  of  the  passions  and  in- 
flame man's  flesh  and  blood  more  powerfully  than 
the  most  unrestrained  license.  There  is  a  logic  of 
the  passions,  but  there  are  also  passions  in  logic. 
And  these  are  essentially  our  new  passions,  peculiar 
to  us  and  alien  to  the  men  of  former  civilisations. 
.  .  .  They  feel  deeply  because  they  think  deeply ; 
they  suffer  endlessly  because  they  are  endlessly 
deliberate;  they  dare  to  will  because  they  have 
272 


ANDREEV 

dared  to  think.  And  the  farther,  apparently,  it  is 
from  life  —  the  more  abstract,  the  more  fiery  is 
their  thought,  the  deeper  it  enters  into  their  lives. 
O  strange  young  Russia  ! " 

Merezhkovski  is  talking  of  the  heroes  of  Dostoev- 
ski; but  his  remark  is  applicable  to  the  work  of 
nearly  all  Russian  novelists,  and  especially  to 
Chekhov  and  Andreev.  It  is  a  profound  criticism 
that,  if  once  grasped  by  the  foreign  reader,  will 
enable  him  to  understand  much  in  Russian  fiction 
that  otherwise  would  be  a  sealed  book.  Every  one 
must  have  noticed  how  Russians  are  hag-ridden 
by  an  idea;  but  no  one  'except  Merezhkovski 
has  observed  the  passion  of  abstract  thought.  In 
some  characters,  such  as  those  Dostoevski  has 
given  us,  it  leads  to  deeds  of  wild  absurdity;  in 
Andreev,  it  usually  leads  to  madness. 

One  of  Andreev's  books  is  indeed  a  whole  com- 
mentary on  the  remark  of  Merezhkovski  quoted 
above.  The  English  title  of  the  translation  is  A 
Dilemma,  but  as  the  translator  has  explained,  the 
name  of  the  story  in  the  original  is  Thought  (My si}. 
The  chief  character  is  a  physician,  Kerzhentsev, 
who  reminds  one  constantly  of  Dostoevski's  Ras- 
kolnikov,  but  whose  states  of  mind  are  even  more 
subtly  analysed.  No  one  should  read  this  story 
unless  his  nerves  are  firm,  for  the  outcome  of  the 
tale  is  such  as  to  make  almost  any  reader  for  a  time 
T  273 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

doubt  his  own  sanity.  It  is  a  curious  study  of  the 
border-line  between  reason  and  madness.  The  phy- 
sician, who  rejoices  in  his  splendid  health,  bodily 
vigour,  and  absolute  equilibrium  of  mind,  quietly 
determines  to  murder  his  best  friend  —  to  murder 
him  openly  and  violently,  and  to  go  about  it  in 
such  a  way  that  he  himself  will  escape  punishment. 
He  means  to  commit  the  murder  to  punish  the  man's 
wife  because  she  had  rejected  him  and  married  his 
friend,  whom  she  loves  with  all  the  strength  of  her 
powerful  nature.  His  problem,  therefore,  is  three- 
fold: he  must  murder  the  man,  the  man's  wife 
must  know  that  he  is  the  murderer,  and  he  must 
escape  punishment.  He  therefore  begins  by  feign- 
ing madness,  and  acting  so  well  that  his  madness 
comes  upon  him  only  at  long  intervals ;  at  a  dinner- 
party he  has  a  violent  fit;  but  he  waits  a  whole 
month  before  having  another  attack.  Everything 
is  beautifully  planned ;  he  smashes  a  plate  with  his 
fist,  but  no  one  observes  that  he  has  taken  care 
previously  to  cover  the  plate  with  his  napkin,  so 
that  his  hand  will  not  be  cut.  His  friends  are  all 
too  sorry  for  him  to  have  any  suspicion  of  a  sinister 
intention ;  and  his  friend  Alexis  is  fatuously  secure. 
Not  so  the  wife ;  she  has  an  instinctive  fear  of  the 
coming  murder.  One  evening,  when  all  three  are 
together,  the  doctor  picks  up  a  heavy  iron  paper- 
weight, and  Alexis  says  that  with  such  an  instru- 
274 


ANDREEV 

ment  a  murderer  might  break  a  man's  head.  This 
is  interesting.  "  It  was  precisely  the  head,  and  pre- 
cisely with  that  thing  that  I  had  planned  to  crush 
it,  and  now  that  same  head  was  telling  how  it  would 
all  end."  Therefore  he  leads  Alexis  into  a  dispute 
by  insisting  that  the  paper-weight  is  too  light. 
Alexis  becomes  angry,  and  actually  makes  the 
doctor  take  the  object  in  his  hand,  and  they 
rehearse  his  own  murder.  They  are  stopped  by 
the  wife,  who,  terror-stricken,  says  that  she 
never  likes  such  jokes.  Both  men  burst  into 
hearty  laughter. 

A  short  time  after,  the  doctor  crushes  the  skull  of 
Alexis  in  the  presence  of  his  wife*  In  the  midst 
of  the  horror  and  confusion  of  the  household,  the 
murderer  slips  out,  goes  home,  and  is  resting  calmly, 
thinking  with  intense  delight  of  the  splendid  success 
of  the  plan,  and  of  the  extraordinary  skill  he  had 
shown  in  its  conception  and  execution ;  when,  just 
as  he  was  dropping  off  to  sleep  in  delicious  drowsi- 
ness, there  "languidly"  entered  into  his  head  this 
thought:  it  speaks  to  his  mind  in  the  third  person, 
as  though  somebody  else  had  actually  said  it :  It  is 
very  possible  that  Dr.  Kerzhentsev  is  really  insane. 
He  thought  that  he  simulated,  but  he  is  really  insane — 
insane  at  this  very  instant. 

After  this  poison  has  entered  his  soul,  his  condi- 
tion can  be  easily  imagined.  A  terrible  debate 
275 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

begins  in  his  own  mind,  for  he  is  fighting  against 
himself  for  his  own  reason.  Every  argument  that 
he  can  think  of  to  persuade  himself  of  his  sanity  he 
marshals ;  but  there  are  plenty  of  arguments  on  the 
other  side.  The  story  is  an  excellent  example  of 
what  Merezhkovski  must  mean  by  the  passion  of 
thought. 

Another  illustration  of  Andreev's  uncanny  power 
is  seen  in  the  short  story  Silence.  A  father  does 
not  understand  his  daughter's  silence,  and  treats 
her  nervous  suffering  with  harsh  practicality.  She 
commits  suicide;  the  mother  is  stricken  with 
paralysis;  silence  reigns  in  the  house.  Silence. 
The  father  beseeches  his  wife  to  speak  to  him ;  there 
is  no  speculation  in  her  wide-open  eyes.  He  cries 
aloud  to  his  dead  daughter.  Silence.  Nothing 
but  silence,  and  the  steady  approach  of  madness. 

Andreev  is  an  unflinching  realist,  with  all  the 
Russian  power  of  the  concrete  phrase.  He  would 
never  say,  in  describing  a  battle,  that  the  Russians 
"suffered  a  severe  loss."  He  would  turn  a  magnify- 
ing glass  on  each  man.  But,  although  he  is  a 
realist  and  above  all  a  psychologist,  he  is  also  a 
poet.  In  the  sketch  Silence  there  is  the  very  spirit 
of  poetry.  The  most  recent  bit  of  writing  by  him 
that  I  have  seen  is  called  a  Fantasy  l  —  Life  is  so 

1  Translated  in  Current  Literature,  New  York,  for  September 
1910. 

276 


ANDREEV 

Beautiful  to  the  Resurrected.  This  is  a  meditation 
in  a  graveyard,  written  in  the  manner  of  one  of 
Turgenev's  Poems  in  Prose,  though  lacking  some- 
thing of  that  master's  exquisite  beauty  of  style. 
It  is,  however,  not  sentimentally  conventional,  but 
original.  The  poetic  quality  in  Andreev  animates 
all  his  dramas,  particularly  To  the  Stars. 


977 


KUPRIN'S   PICTURE   OF   GARRISON  LIFE 

As  Tolstoi,  Garshin,  and  Andreev  have  shown  the 
horrors  of  war,  so  Kuprin  l  has  shown  the  utter 
degradation  and  sordid  misery  of  garrison  life.  If 
Russian  army  posts  in  time  of  peace  bear  even  a 
remote  resemblance  to  the  picture  given  in  Kuprin 's 
powerful  novel  In  Honour's  Name,2  one  would 
think  that  the  soldiers  there  entombed  would 
heartily  rejoice  at  the  outbreak  of  war  —  would 
indeed  welcome  any  catastrophe,  provided  it  re- 
leased them  from  such  an  Inferno.  It  is  interest- 
ing to  compare  stories  of  American  garrisons,  or 
such  clever  novels  as  Mrs.  Diver's  trilogy  of  British 
army  posts  in  India,  with  the  awful  revelations  made 
by  Kuprin.  Among  these  Russian  officers  and 
soldiers  there  is  not  one  gleam  of  patriotism  to 
glorify  the  drudgery;  there  is  positively  no  ideal, 
even  dim-descried.  The  officers  are  a  collection  of 
hideously  selfish,  brutal,  drunken,  licentious  beasts ; 
their  mental  horizon  is  almost  inconceivably  narrow, 

1  Kuprin  was  born  in  1870,  and  was  for  a  time  an  officer  in 
the  Russian  army. 

2  Translated  by  W.  F.  Harvey  :  the  French  translation  is  called 
Une  Petite  Garnison  Russe;  the  German,  Das  Duell,  after  the 
original  title. 

278 


PICTURE  OF  GARRISON  LIFE 

far  narrower  than  that  of  mediaeval  monks  in  a 
monastery.  The  soldiers  are  in  worse  plight  than 
prisoners,  being  absolutely  at  the  mercy  of  the  alco- 
holic caprices  of  their  superiors.  A  favourite  device 
of  the  officer  is  to  jam  the  trumpet  against  the 
trumpeter's  mouth,  when  he  is  trying  to  obey  orders 
by  sounding  the  call ;  then  they  laugh  at  him  deri- 
sively as  he  spits  out  blood  and  broken  teeth.  The 
common  soldiers  are  beaten  and  hammered  unmerci- 
fully in  the  daily  drill,  so  that  they  are  all  bewil- 
dered, being  in  such  a  state  of  terror  that  it  is  im- 
possible for  them  to  perform  correctly  even  the 
simplest  manoeuvres.  The  only  officer  in  this  story 
who  treats  his  men  with  any  consideration  is  a 
libertine,  who  seduces  the  peasants'  daughters  in 
the  neighbourhood,  and  sends  them  back  to  their 
parents  with  cash  payments  for  their  services. 

If  Kuprin's  story  be  true,  one  does  not  need  to  look 
far  for  the  utter  failure  of  the  Russian  troops  in 
the  Japanese  war ;  the  soldiers  are  here  represented 
as  densely  ignorant,  drilling  in  abject  terror  of  their 
officers'  fists  and  boots,  and  knowing  nothing  what- 
ever of  true  formations  in  attack  or  defence.  As  for 
the  officers,  they  are  much  worse  than  the  soldiers: 
their  mess  is  nothing  but  an  indescribably  foul 
alcoholic  den,  where  sodden  drunkenness  and 
filthy  talk  are  the  steady  routine.  They  are  all 
gamblers  and  debauchees;  as  soon  as  a  sum  of 
279 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

money  can  be  raised  among  them,  they  visit  the 
brothel.  The  explanation  of  the  beastly  habits  of 
these  representatives  of  the  Tsar  is  given  in  the 
novel  in  this  wise:  "Yes,  they  are  all  alike,  even 
the  best  and  most  tender-hearted  among  them.  At 
home  they  are  splendid  fathers  of  families  and  ex- 
cellent husbands ;  but  as  soon  as  they  approach  the 
barracks  they  become  low-minded,  cowardly,  and 
idiotic  barbarians.  You  ask  me  why  this  is,  and  I 
answer :  Because  nobody  can  find  a  grain  of  sense 
in  what  is  called  military  service.  You  know  how 
all  children  like  to  play  at  war.  Well,  the  human 
race  has  had  its  childhood  —  a  time  of  incessant 
and  bloody  war ;  but  war  was  not  then  one  of  the 
scourges  of  mankind,  but  a  continued,  savage,  exul- 
tant national  feast  to  which  daring  bands  of  youths 
marched  forth,  meeting  victory  or  death  with  joy 
and  pleasure.  .  .  .  Mankind,  however,  grew  in 
age  and  wisdom;  people  got  weary  of  the  former 
rowdy,  bloody  games,  and  became  more  serious, 
thoughtful,  and  cautious.  The  old  Vikings  of  song 
and  saga  were  designated  and  treated  as  pirates. 
The  soldier  no  longer  regarded  war  as  a  bloody  but 
enjoyable  occupation,  and  had  often  to  be  dragged 
to  the  enemy  with  a  noose  round  his  neck.  The 
former  terrifying,  ruthless,  adored  atamens1  have 

1  Officers. 
280 


PICTURE  OF  GARRISON  LIFE 

been  changed  into  cowardly,  cautious  tschinovnih,1 
who  get  along  painfully  enough  on  never  adequate 
pay.  Their  courage  is  of  a  new  and  quite  moist 
kind,  for  it  is  invariably  derived  from  the  glass. 
Military  discipline  still  exists,  but  it  is  based  on 
threats  and  dread,  and  undermined  by  a  dull,  mu- 
tual hatred.  .  .  .  And  all  this  abomination  is 
carefully  hidden  under  a  close  veil  of  tinsel  and 
finery,  and  foolish,  empty  ceremonies,  in  all  ages 
the  charlatan's  conditio  sine  qua  non.  Is  not  this 
comparison  of  mine  between  the  priesthood  and  the 
military  caste  interesting  and  logical?  Here  the 
riassa  and  the  censer ;  there  the  gold-laced  uniform 
and  the  clank  of  arms.  Here  bigotry,  hypocritical 
humility,  sighs  and  sugary,  sanctimonious,  unmean- 
ing phrases;  there  the  same  odious  grimaces, 
although  its  method  and  means  are  of  another 
kind  —  swaggering  manners,  bold  and  scornful 
looks  —  'God  help  the  man  who  dares  to  insult 
me  ! '  —  padded  shoulders,  cock-a-hoop  defiance. 
Both  the  former  and  the  latter  class  live  like  para- 
sites on  society,  and  are  profoundly  conscious  of 
that  fact,  but  fear  —  especially  for  their  bellies' 
sake  —  to  publish  it.  And  both  remind  one  of 
certain  little  blood-sucking  animals  which  eat  their 
way  most  obstinately  into  the  surface  of  a  foreign 
body  in  proportion  as  it  is  slippery  and  steep." 
1  Officials. 
281 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

Apart  from  the  terrible  indictment  of  army  life 
and  military  organisation  that  Kuprin  has  given, 
the  novel  In  Honour's  Name  is  an  interesting  story 
with  living  characters.  There  is  not  a  single  good 
woman  in  the  book :  the  officers'  wives  are  licen- 
tious, unprincipled,  and  eaten  up  with  social 
ambition.  The  chief  female  character  is  a  subtle, 
clever,  heartless,  diabolical  person,  who  plays  on  her 
lover's  devotion  in  the  most  sinister  manner,  and 
eventually  brings  him  to  the  grave  by  a  device  that 
startles  the  reader  by  its  cold-blooded,  calculating 
cruelty.  Surely  no  novelists  outside  of  Russia 
have  drawn  such  evil  women.  The  hero,  Romashov, 
is  once  more  the  typical  Russian  whom  we  have  met 
in  every  Russian  novelist,  a  talker,  a  dreamer,  with 
high  ideals,  harmlessly  sympathetic,  and  without 
one  grain  of  resolution  or  will-power.  He  spends 
all  his  time  in  aspirations,  sighs,  and  tears  —  and 
never  by  any  chance  accomplishes  anything.  The 
author's  mouthpiece  in  the  story  is  the  drunkard 
Nasanski,  who  prophesies  of  the  good  time  of  the 
brotherhood  of  man  far  in  the  future.  This  is  to 
be  brought  about,  not  by  the  teachings  of  Tolstoi, 
which  he  ridicules,  but  by  self-assertion.  This 
self-assertion  points  the  way  to  Artsybashev's 
Sanin,  although  in  Kuprin  it  does  not  take  on  the 
form  of  absolute  selfishness.  One  of  Nasanski's 
alcoholic  speeches  seems  to  contain  the  doctrine  of 
282 


PICTURE  OF  GARRISON  LIFE 

the  whole  book:  "Yes,  a  new,  glorious,  and  won- 
derful time  is  at  hand.  I  venture  to  say  this,  for 
I  myself  have  lived  a  good  deal  in  the  world,  read, 
seen,  experienced,  and  suffered  much.  When  I  was  a 
schoolboy,  the  old  crows  and  jackdaws  croaked  into 
our  ears:  'Love  your  neighbour  as  yourself,  and 
know  that  gentleness,  obedience,  and  the  fear  of 
God  are  man's  fairest  adornments.'  Then  came 
certain  strong,  honest,  fanatical  men  who  said : 
'Come  and  join  us,  and  we'll  throw  ourselves  into 
the  abyss  so  that  the  coming  race  shall  live  in  light 
and  freedom.'  But  I  never  understood  a  word  of 
this.  Who  do  you  suppose  is  going  to  show  me, 
in  a  convincing  way,  in  what  manner  I  am  linked 
to  this  'neighbour '  of  mine  —  damn  him  !  who,  you 
know,  may  be  a  miserable  slave,  a  Hottentot,  a 
leper,  or  an  idiot?  .  .  .  Can  any  reasonable 
being  tell  me  why  I  should  crush  my  head  so  that 
the  generation  in  the  year  320x5  may  attain  a  higher 
standard  of  happiness?  .  .  .  Love  of  humanity 
is  burnt  out  and  has  vanished  from  the  heart  of 
man.  In  its  stead  shall  come  a  new  creed,  a  new 
view  of  life  that  shall  last  to  the  world's  end ;  and 
this  view  of  life  consists  in  the  individual's  love  for 
himself,  for  his  own  powerful  intelligence,  and  the 
infinite  riches  of  his  feelings  and  perceptions.  .  .  . 
Ah,  a  time  will  come  when  the  fixed  belief  hi  one's 
own  Ego  will  cast  its  blessed  beams  over  mankind 
283 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

as  did  once  the  fiery  tongues  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
over  the  Apostles'  heads.  Then  there  shall  be  no 
longer  slaves  and  masters ;  no  maimed  or  cripples ; 
no  malice,  no  vices,  no  pity,  no  hate.  Men  shall  be 
gods.  How  shall  I  dare  to  deceive,  insult,  or  illtreat 
another  man,  in  whom  I  see  and  feel  my  fellow,  who, 
like  myself,  is  a  god  ?  Then,  and  then  only,  shall 
life  be  rich  and  beautiful. .  .  .  Our  daily  life  shall  be 
a  pleasurable  toil,  an  enfranchised  science,  a  wonder- 
ful music,  an  everlasting  merrymaking.  Love,  free 
and  sovereign,  shall  become  the  world's  religion." 

In  considering  Russian  novelists  of  to-day,  and 
the  promise  for  the  future,  Andreev  seems  to  be  the 
man  best  worth  v/atching  —  he  is  the  most  gifted 
artist  of  them  all.  But  it  is  clear  that  no  new 
writer  has  appeared  in  Russia  since  the  death  of 
Dostoevski  in  1881  who  can  compare  for  an  instant 
with  the  author  of  Anna  Karenina,  and  that  the 
great  names  in  Russian  fiction  are  now,  as  they 
were  forty  years  ago,  Gogol,  Turgenev,  Tolstoi, 
and  Dostoevski.  Very  few  long  novels  have  been 
published  in  Russia  since  Resurrection  that,  so  far 
as  we  can  judge,  have  permanent  value.  Gorki's 
novels  are  worthless ;  his  power,  like  that  of  Chekhov 
and  Andreev,  is  seen  to  best  advantage  in  the 
short  story.  Perhaps  the  younger  school  have  made 
a  mistake  in  studying  so  exclusively  the  abnormal. 
284 


LIST  OF   PUBLICATIONS 

BY  ANDREW  KEOGH 

[The  nine  authors  are  in  alphabetical  order.  The  books 
of  each  are  in  chronological  order,  and  include,  in  addition 
to  prose  fiction,  all  important  poetical  and  dramatic  writ- 
ings. Political  and  religious  tracts  and  essays  are  excluded. 
The  novels  of  Tolstoi  and  of  Turgenev  are  all  accessible  in 
English ;  for  other  authors  the  list  includes  translations  into 
German  and  French,  as  well  as  into  English,  because  many 
of  their  most  important  works  have  not  yet  been  translated 
into  English.] 

LEONID  NIKOLAEVICH  ANDREEV 
1871- 

1898.  Bargamot  i  GarasTca. 
Zashchita.     [Defence.] 

Iz  zhizni  sht.-kap.  Kablukova.    [From  the  life 

of  Staff-captain  Kablukov.] 
Molodesh'.     [Brave  fellow.] 

1899.  Pervyl  gonorar.     [The  first  honorarium. J 
Drug.     [The  friend.] 

Mel'kom. 

U  okna.    [At  the  window.] 
Valla. 

Pet'ka   na   dachie.     [Petka   in    the   country- 
house.] 

Angelochek.     [Little  angel.] 
Bol'shoi  shlem.    [A  big  slam.] 

1900.  Prazdnik.     [The  holiday.] 

Prekrasna  zhizn'  dlia  voskresshikh.     [Life   is 
beautiful  to  the  resurrected.] 

—  Life   is   so   beautiful    to    the    resurrected, 
Current  Literature,  5  Sept.  1910. 
285 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

Lozh'.     [The  lie.] 

—  Die  Luge.    Deutsch  von  Nadja  Hornstein. 

Dresden,  1902. 
Na  riekie.     [On  the  river.] 
Razskaz  o  Sergieie  Petrovichie.     [The  story  of 

Sergius  Petrovich.] 
Molchame.    [SUence.] 

—  Silence.     Tr.    by    John    Cournos.     Phila- 

delphia, Brown,  1908. 
V  temnuiu  dal'.     [In  the  dark  mist.] 

1901.  Gostinets.     [The  gift.] 
Kusaka.     [The  biter.] 
Kniga.     [The  book.] 
Smiekh.     [Laughter.] 
Zhili-byli.     [Once  upon  a  time.] 
Stiena.     [The  wall.] 

Nabat.     [The  alarm  bell.] 
V  podvalie.     [In  the  cellar.] 

1902.  Vesnol.     [In  spring.] 
Gorod.     [The  city.^ 

Original'nyi  cheloviek.     [Queer  people.] 
Inostranets.     [The  foreigner.] 
Predstoiala    krazha.     [A    burglary    was    ex- 
pected.] 
Bezdna.    [The  abyss.] 

—  Lc    gouffre.    Tr.    par    S.    Persky.    Paris, 

1903. 
Mysl'.    [Thought] 

—  A  dilemma.    Tr.  by  John  Cournos.     Phil- 

adelphia, Brown,  1910. 
V  tumanie.    [In  the  fog.] 

—  Im  Nebel.     Ubers.  von  S.  Wermer.     Wien, 

1903. 

—  Im   Nebel.    Aus  dem   Russ.    Von  L.   A. 

Hauff.    Berlin,  1905. 
286 


LIST  OF  PUBLICATIONS 

1903.  Vesenniia    obieshchaniia.    [The    promises    of 

spring.] 

Zhizn'   Vasiliia   Fivelskago.    [Life   of   Vasiffi 
Fiveiskii.] 

—  Das     Leben     Vater     Wassili     Fiweiski's. 

Deutsch  von  G.  Poloneki.     Berlin,  1906. 
Na  stantsii.     [At  the  station.] 
Marsel'eza.     [The  Marseillaise.] 
Ben-Tovit. 

1004.  Niet  proshcheniia.    [There  is  no  forgiveness.] 

Vor.     [The  thief.] 
Krasnyi  smiekh.     [Red  laughter.] 

—  Das  rote  Lachen.     Ubertr.  von  Aug.  Scholz. 

Berlin,  1905. 

—  Le  rire  rouge.  Tr.  par  S.  Persky.   Paris,  1005. 

—  The  red  laugh.     Tr.  by  Alexandra  Linden. 

London,  Unwin,  1905. 
Prizraki.     [Visions.] 

1905.  Khristiane.     [Christians.] 
Gubernator.     [The  Governor.] 

—  Der  Gouverneur.     Ubers.  von  Aug.  Scholz. 

Berlin,  1906. 

—  His    Excellency    the    Governor.    Harper's 

Weekly,  9  Feb.  to  2  March,  1007. 

—  Le     Gouverneur.    Tr.     de    J.     Ferenczy. 

Paris,  1909. 
Tak  bylo.    [So  it  was.] 

1906.  Sawa. 

—  Ignis  sanat  (Ssawa).    Deutsch  von  0.  D. 

Patthof.    Berlin,  1906. 
K  zviezdam'.     [To  the  stars.] 

—  Zu  den  Sternen.    Deutsch  von  A.  Scholz. 

Berlin,  1906. 

—  To  the  stars.    Tr.  by  A.   Goudiss.    Poet 

Lore,  Winter,  1907. 
287 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

Eleasar.   Novelle.    (In  russ.  Sprache.)    Berlin, 
1906. 

—  Lazarus.    Current  Literature,  May,  1907. 

—  Lazarus.     Deutsch     von     R.     Meckelein. 

(With  Judas  Ischariot.    Berlin,  1909.) 

1907.  luda  Iskariot  i  drugie.     [Judas  Iscariot   and 

the  others.] 

—  Judas   Ischariot  und   die  andern.     libers. 

von  Otto  Buck.     Berlin  [1909]. 

—  Judas  Iscariot  and  the  others.    Tr.  by  Archi- 

bald J.  Wolfe.    Sewanee  Rev.,  April,  1908. 

—  Judas  Iscariot.       Tr.   by   W.   H.   Lowe. 

London,  Griffiths,  1910. 
Zhizn'  chelovieka.     [Life  of  man.] 

—  Das  Leben  der  Menschen.    Deutsch  von 

A.  Scholz.     Berlin,  1908. 

—  The  life  of  man.     Tr.  by  M.  Baring.    Ox- 

ford and  Cambridge  Rev.,  Midsummer, 
1908;  Living  Age,  26  Sept.  1908. 

Der  Fluch  des  Tieres.  Novelle.  (In  russ. 
Sprache.)  Berlin,  1907. 

T'ma.     [Darkness.]    Berlin,  1907. 

1908.  Razskaz   o    semi    povieshennykh.    [Story   of 

the  seven  who  were  hanged.] 

—  Die    sieben    Gehenkten.    tibers.   von    A. 

Scholz.    Berlin,  1908. 

—  Die  Geschichte  von  den  sieben  Gehenkten. 

Ubertx.  von  Lully  Wiebeck.    Miinchen, 
1909. 

—  The  seven  who  were  hanged.    Tr.  by  Her- 

man Bernstein.     N.Y.,  Ogilvie  [1909]. 
Chernyia  maski.     [The  black  masks.] 
Dni  nashei  zhizni.     [The  days  of  our  life.] 

—  Studentliebe.     Drama.     Deutsch   von    C. 

Ritter.     Berlin,  1909. 
288 


LIST  OF  PUBLICATIONS 

Smert  chelovieka.     [The  death  of  a  man.] 

Korol'  Golod.     [King  Hunger.] 

Derzhite  vora.     [Stop  thief  !] 

Moi  zapiski.     [My  memoirs.] 

Kliatva.    [The  oath.] 

Liubov.    [Love.] 

Nachstenliebe.    Schwank  in  i  Akt.     (In  russ. 

Sprache.)    Berlin,  1908. 
Des  Menschen  Sohn.     Erzahlung.     (In  russ. 

Sprache.)    Berlin,  1909. 
1909.  Umoristicheskie  razskazy.    [Humorous   tales.] 

(In  collaboration  with  A.  I.  Kuprin.) 
Iz  strany.    [News  from  the  country.] 
Anfisa.     Ein  Drama.      (In    russ.    Sprache.) 

Berlin,  1909. 

Dushie  stradavskei  v  tiesninakh  zhizni.  [Of 
the  soul  that  was  suffering  in  the  narrows 
of  life.] 

Anatema.    [Anathema.] 
—  Anathema.    Tr.     by    Herman    Bernstein.  ' 

N.Y.,  Macmillan,  1910. 
Gaudeamus.    Komodie.     (In  russ.   Sprache.) 

Berlin,  1910. 

Andreev's  collected  works  were  published  in  St.  Peters- 
burg in  1901-1909  in  six  volumes.     The  following  transla- 
tions   contain    more    than    one    work :  — 
Die  Luge.    Ausgewahlte  Erzahlungen.    Deutsch  von  Nadja 

Hornstein.    Dresden,  1902. 

Es    war    einmal.    Das    Schweigen.    Das    Lachen.    Die 
Luge.    Novellen.    Deutsch  von  Stefania  Goldenring. 
Berlin,  1902. 
Der   Auslander   und   andere    Geschichten.    Deutsch   von 

Anna  Lubinow.    Berlin,  1903. 

Der  Gedanke  und  andere  Novellen.    Ubers.  von  Elis.  und 
Jorik  Georg.    Miinchen,  1903. 
u  289 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

Im  Erdgeschoss  und  anderes.    Berlin,  1903. 

Im  Nebel,  und  andere  Novellen.     libers,  von  Elis.  und 

Yorik  Georg.     Stuttgart,  1903. 
Novellen.    Aus  dem  Russ.  von  Alexis  von  Krusenstjerna. 

Leipzig,  1903. 
Friihlingsversprechen  und  andere  Geschichten.     Ubers.  von 

Sonja  Wermer.     Wien,  1904. 
Der  Abgrund  und  andere  Novellen.     Ubertr.  von  Theo. 

Kroczek.    Halle,  1905. 
Nouvelles.    Tr.  par  Serge  Persky.     (Le  Gouverneur.     Kous- 

saka.     Le  capitaine  en  second  Kabloukof.     L'etranger. 

Bergamote  et  Garaska.    Le  cadeau.     En  attendant  le 

train.     La  vie  est  belle  pour  les  ressuscites.)     Paris,  1908. 
Silence,  and  other  stories.     Tr.  by  W.  H.  Lowe.     London, 

Griffiths,  1910. 

MIKHAIL  ARTSYBASHEV 

1878- 

1905.  Razskazy.     [Tales.] 

Bunt.     [The  revolt.] 

Praporshchik  Gololobov.     [Ensign  Gololobov.] 
Smert'  Lande.     [The  death  of  Lande.] 
Zhena.     [The  wife.] 

1907.  Krovavoe  piatno.     [The  blood-stain.] 
V  derevnie.     [In  the  village.] 

Muzhik  i  baba.     [The  peasant  and  the  peasant- 
woman.] 

Odin  den'.     [One  day.] 
Revoliutsioner.    [The  revolutionist.] 
Sanin. 

1908.  Million.     [A  million.] 
Razskazy^  [Tales.] 

1909.  Svobodnaia  liubov'.     [Free  love.] 
Spravedlivost'.     [Justice.] 

290 


LIST  OF   PUBLICATIONS 

Skazka  starago  prokurora.     [The  story  of  the 
old  attorney.] 

Razskazy.  [Tales.]  (Contents:  Muzhik  i 
barin.  [The  peasant  and  the  nobleman.] 
Odin  den'.  [One  day.]  Revoliutsioner. 
[The  revolutionist.]  Krovavoe  piatno. 
[The  blood-stain.]  V  derevnie.  [In  the 
village.]  Uzhas.  [Horror.].) 
ipio.  •^af!la  Tumanov. 

Etiudy.  [Studies.]  (Contents :  Noch.  [Night.] 
Schast'e.  [Happiness.]  Iz  zhizni  malen'- 
kol  zhenshchiny.  [From  the  h'fe  of  a  little 
woman.]  Propast'.  [The  abyss.]  O 
smerti  Chekhova.  [The  death  of  Chek- 
hov.] Muzhik  i  barin.  V  derevnie. 
Odin  den'.  Na  bielom  sniegu.  [On  the 
white  snow.]  Zlodiel  [The  villains.] 
Doktor.  [The  doctor.] 

Am     letzten     Punkt.      Roman.     (In    russ. 

Sprache.)     Miinchen,  1910. 
The  following  translations  have  appeared :  — 
Ssanin.     Deutsch  von  L.  Wiebeck.     Wien  [1008]. 

—  Ubertr.  von  A.  Villard  und  S.  Bugow ;  mit  einer  Einleit- 

ung  von  A.  Villard.     Miinchen,  1900. 

—  Moderne  Sittenroman  Jung-Russlands.    Berlin,  1909. 

—  Sittenroman    aus    den    Tagen    der    russ.    Revolution. 

Aus  dem  Russ.  von  L.  Wiebeck.    Berlin,  1909. 

—  Sanine.     Tr.  par  Jacques  Povolozki.     Paris,  1910. 
Erinnerungen  eines  alten  Staatsanwalts,  und  andere  Erzah- 

lungen.    Aus  dem  Russ.  von  M.  Flor  und  H.  Kurz. 

Berlin,  1909. 
Schuster  Anton.     Morgenschatten.    Zwei  Novellen.    libers. 

von  Dr.  Valerian  Tornius.    Leipzig,  1909. 
Sturmflut.     (Die   Menschenwelle.)     Ins  Deutsche  von  H. 

Kurz.    Berlin,  1909. 

291 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

Millionen.  Der  Tod  des  Iwan  Lande.  Zwei  Novellen, 
iibertr.  von  Andre  Villard  und  S.  Bugow.  Miinchen, 
1009. 

Revolutionsgeschichten.  Deutsche  Ubertr.  von  S.  Bugow 
und  A.  Villard.  Mit  einer  Einleitung  von  Andre  Villard, 
einer  autobiograph.  Skizze,  und  einer  Portrat  von  M. 
Artzibaschew.  Miinchen,  1909. 

Das  Weib,  und  andere  Novellen.     Berlin,  1910. 

Aus  dem  Leben  eines  kleinen  Madchens  und  andere  No- 
vellen. Deutsch  von  Adolf  Hess.  Dresden,  1910. 

Am  letzten  Ende.  Roman.  Deutsch  von  Adolf  Hess. 
Berlin,  1910. 

ANTON  PAVLOVICH  CHEKHOV 
29  January  (17  Jan.)  1860   to   15  July  (2  July)  1004 

Chekhov's  collected  works  were  published  in  St.  Peters- 
burg in  1 6  volumes  in  1903.  His  writings  are  so  short  and 
numerous  that  it  is  impracticable  to  mention  them  sepa- 
rately here.  A  list  of  translations  follows,  arranged  in  chron- 
ological order. 
Russische  Leute.  Geschichten  aus  dem  Alltagsleben. 

Deutsch  von  Joh.  Treumann.    Leipzig,  1890. 
Philosophy  at  home.     In  Short  Stories,  October,  1891. 
In  der  Dammerung.     Skizzen  und  Erzahlungen.    Aus  dem 

Russ.  von  Joh.  Treumann.    Leipzig,  1891. 
Ennemis.     In  Les  Conteurs  russes  modernes.     Paris,  1895. 
Rothschild's  Geige.    Deutsch  von  A.  Brauner.    In  Rus- 
sische Novellen.     Leipzig,  1896. 
Russische    Liebelei.     Novellen.     libers,   von    L.    Flachs- 

Fokschaneanu.     Miinchen,  1897. 
Zum  Irrsinn  (Wahnsinn) !    Ubers.  von  O.  Treyden.    Berlin, 

1897. 

Ein  Zweikampf.  Ubers.  von  Korfiz  Holm.  Miinchen, 
1897. 

292 


LIST  OF  PUBLICATIONS 

The  biter  bit.     Temple  Bar,  May,  1897. 

Sorrow.     Temple  Bar,  May,  1897. 

Das  Duell.    Aus  dem  Russ.  von  C.  Berger.    Berlin,  1898. 

Starker  Tobak  und  andere  Novellen.     Ubers.  von  Wladimir 

Czumikow.     Munchen,  1898. 
Der  Taugenichts.  Erzahlung  einer  Provinzialen.      Deutsch 

von  F.  vind  G.  Bernhard.    Munchen,  1900. 
Das  Schwanenlied  des  Komikers.     Ubers.  von  L.  Flachs- 

Fokschaneanu.    Berlin,  1901. 
Les  moujiks.    Tr.  par  Denis  Roche.     Paris,   1901.     (Les 

moujiks.     Dans  le  bas-fond.    Le  pipeau.  Vanka.    D6- 

tresse.    La  princesse.    Remords.    Sur  la  terre  6tran- 

gere.    Chez    la    marechale    de    la    noblesse.     Graine 

errante.     Une  fievre  typhoide.    La  salle  no.  6.) 
Ein  Sommerfrischler.     Bearbeitet  von  A.  Flachs.     Berlin, 

1001. 

Un  duel.     Tr.  par  Henri  Chirol.     Paris,  1901. 
Der  schwarze  Monch  und  andere  Erzahlungen.    Deutsch 

von  E.  Berger.    Leipzig,  1901. 
Ja,  die  Frauenzimmer !    und  andere  Novellen.    Deutsch 

von  K.  Holm.     Munchen,  1901. 
Eine  kunstliebende  Frau  und  andere  Erzahlungen.     Deutsch 

von  E.  Berger.    Leipzig,  1901. 

Die  Mowe.     Ubers.  von  V.  Czumikow.    Leipzig,  1902. 
Un  meurtre.    Tr.  par  Mile.  Claire  Ducreux.    Paris,  1902. 
Schatten  des  Todes.    Deutsch  von  K.  Holm.    Munchen, 

1902. 

Onkel  Wanja.     Ubers.  von  V.  Czumikow.    Leipzig,  1902. 
Onkel  Wanja.    Ubers.  von  A.  Scholz.    Berlin,  1902. 
Drei  Schwestern.     Deutsch  von  A.  Scholz.     Berlin,  1902. 
Drei  Schwestern.    Deutsch  von  V.  Czumikow.   Leipzig,  1902. 
Die  drei  Schwestern.     Fur  die  deutsche  Buhne  bearbeitet 

von  H.  Stiimcke.     Leipzig,  1002. 
Eine  gottgefallige  Anstalt.   Deutsch  von  C.  Berger.    Berlin, 

1902. 

293 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

In  der  Passagierstube,  und  andere  Erzahlungen.    Deutsch 

von  E.  Berger.    Leipzig,  1902. 
Verhangniss   und    andere    Erzahlungen.    Aus   dem    Russ. 

von  L.  M.  Weigandt.    Berlin,  1902. 
Siinde  und  andere  Geschichten.     Deutsch  von  N.  Moehring. 

Berlin,  1902. 
Die  Mowe.     Fur  die  deutsche  Buhne  bearbeitet  von  H. 

Stiimcke.     Leipzig,  1902. 
Der  Bar.     Ein  Heiratsantrag.     Ubertr.  von  Luise  Flachs- 

Fokschaneanu.    Leipzig,  1902. 

Hatschil !    und    andere    Geschichten.     17   Kleine   Erzah- 
lungen.    Ubers.  von  Josephson.     Berlin,  1903. 
The  black  monk  and  other  stories.    Tr.  by  R.  E.  C.  Long. 

London,  Duckworth,  1903.     (On  the  way.     A  family 

council  at  home.     In  exile.     Rothschild's  fiddle.    A 

father.    Two  tragedies.    Sleepyhead.    At  the  manor. 

An  event.    Ward  No.  6.) 
In  exile.    Fortnightly  Rev.,  September,  1903. 
Die  Simulanten  und  andere  Geschichten.     Berlin,  1903. 
Das     schwedische    Streichholz   und    andere     Geschichten. 

Deutsch  von  C.  Berger.     Berlin,  1903. 
Aus  dem  Aufzeichnungen  eines  alten  Mannes.     Ubers.  von 

M.  Feofonoff.    Leipzig,  1903. 
Ein  Gliicklicher,  und  andere  Geschichten.     Aus  dem  Russ. 

von  E.  Roth.     Berlin,  1903. 
Gesammelte  Werke.      Ubers.  von  W.  Czumikow.     Jena, 

1901-1904.     5  vols. 
Das  Katzchen.    Aus  dem  Russ.  von  K.  Brauner.    Wien, 

1904. 
Die  Hexe  und  andere  Novellen.     Ubers.  von  Theo.   Kro- 

czek.     Halle,  1904. 
Weiberregiment.    In   der   Verbannung.    Irrwisch.     Ubers. 

von  E.  Lockenberg.     Leipzig,  1905. 
Im    Gliickesrausch    und    andere   Novellen.     Deutsch   von 

Stefania  Goldenring.     Reutlingen,  1905. 
294 


LIST  OF   PUBLICATIONS 

Mude.  Die  Furstin.  Rothschild's  Geige.  Aus  dem  Russ. 
von  S.  W.  Mierzinski.  Leipzig,  1905. 

Von  der  Liebe.     libers,  von  K.  Brauner.     Wien,  1905. 

Street  scene  in  Russia.     Canadian  Mag.,  April,  1905. 

Sleepy-eye.     Cosmopolitan  Mag.,  June,  1906. 

Darling.     Fortnightly  Rev.,  September,  1906. 

The  cherry  garden.  Tr.  by  Max  S.  Mandell.  New  Haven, 
Yale  C our  ant,  1908. 

The  Kiss,  and  other  stories.  Tr.  by  R.  E.  C.  Long.  Lon- 
don, Duckworth,  1908. 

"Kaschtanka."  Bad  conduct.  New  England  Mag.,  January, 
1909. 

Bear.  Tr.  by  Roy  Temple  House.  N.Y.,  Moods  Co., 
1910. 

FEDOR  MIKHAILOVICH   DOSTOEVSKI! 

ii  November  (30  Oct.)  1821  to  9  February  (28  Jan.)  1881 

1846.  Biednye  Liudi.    [Poor  folk.] 

—  Arme  Leute.    Aus  dem  Russ.  von  A.  L. 

Hauff.     Dresden,  1887. 
-  Poor  folk.    N.Y.,  Harper,  1887. 

—  Les  pauvres  gens.    Tr.  par  Victor  Der61y. 

Paris  [1888]. 

—  Poor  folk.     Tr.  by  Lena  Milman.     London, 

Ma  thews,  1894 ;  Boston,  Roberts,  1894. 
Dvoinik.     [The  Double.] 

—  Der  Doppelganger.     Aus  dem   Russ.   von 

L.  A.  Hauff.     Berlin  [1889]. 

—  Le  Double.      Tr.  par  J.  W.  Bienstock  et 

L.  Werth.     Paris,  1906. 
Gospodin  Prokharchin.     [Mr.  Prokharchin.] 

—  Herr  Prochartschin.     Deutsch  von  F.   O. 

Maksimow.     Leipzig  [1889]. 

295 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

1847.  Roman  v  deviati  pis'makh.     [A  novel  in  nine 

letters.] 

—  Roman  en  neuf  lettres.    Tr.  du  russe  par 

E.   Halperine-Kaminsky  et   Ch.   Morice. 
Paris  [1888].    In  Celle  d'un  autre,  infra. 

—  Ein  Roman  in  neun  Brief  en.    Berlin,  1896. 
Khozialka.     [The  landlady.] 

—  L'esprit    souterrain.     Tr.    et    adapt6    par 

E.  Halperine  et  Ch.  Morice.     Paris  [1886]. 

—  Die  Unbekannte.     Ubers.  von  L.  A.  Hauff. 

Berlin  [1890]. 

1848.  Polzunkov. 

Slaboe  Serdtse.    [A  Weak  Heart.] 

—  Ein  schwaches  Herz.   Deutsch  von  H.  Ros- 

koschny.     Berlin  [1888]. 

—  Cceur  faible.    Tr.  par  E.  Halpe'rine.     Paris, 

1802.    In  Les  6tapes  de  la  folie. 
Chuzhaia  zhena.     [The"!    In    1865    these   two 

wife  of  another.]     I        stories  were  com- 
Revnivyi  muzh.     [Thej       bined    under    the 

jealous  husband.]  J  title  Chuzhaia 
zhena  i  muzh  pod 
krovat'iu.  [The 
wife  of  another 
and  the  man  under 
the  bed.] 

—  La  femme  d'un  autre.     Tr.  par  E.  Hal- 

perine-Kaminsky.    Paris,  1888. 

—  Celle  d'un  autre.     Tr.  par  E.  Halp6rine- 

Kaminsky.     2.  ed.  Paris  [1888]. 

—  Die  fremde  Frau  und  der  Mann  unterm 

Bett.     Miinchen,  1908. 
Chestnyi  vor.     [The  honest  thief.] 

—  Un     voleur    honn^te.     Paris     [1888].     In 

Celle  d'un  autre,  supra. 
296 


LIST  OF  PUBLICATIONS 

—  Aufzeichnungen  eines  Unbekannten.     Leip- 

zig, 1888.     In  Herr  Prochartschin,  supra. 

—  L'honne'te  voleur.     Paris,  1892. 

—  Ein  ehrlicher  Dieb.     Miinchen,  1908.    In 

Die  fremde  Frau,  supra. 

Elka  i  svad'ba.     [The  Christmas  tree  and  the 
wedding.] 

—  L'arbre  de  Noel.    Paris  [1886].    In  Krot- 

kaia,  infra. 

—  L'arbre  de  Noel  des  pauvres  petits.     Paris, 

1896.    In  Golschmann  et  Jaubert,  L'ame 
russe. 
Biel'iia  nochi.    [White  nights.] 

—  Le  joueur  et  Les  nuits  blanches.    Tr.  par 

E.  Halperine.     Paris  [1887]. 

—  Weisse  Nachte.     Aus  dem  Russ.  von  A. 

Hauff.     Berlin  [1888]. 

—  Helle  Nachte.    Leipzig  [1890]. 
1849.              Netochka  Nezvanova. 

—  Jesimow.    [Part  i  of  Netochka.]    In  Jtir- 

gen's  Russ.  Novellenbuch,  1886. 

—  Nettchen  Neswanow.    Berlin  [1889]. 

—  Ame  d'enfant.    Tr.  par  E.  Halperine-Ka- 

minsky.     Paris  [1890]. 
1857.  Malen'n  gerol.     [The  little  hero.] 

—  Le  petit  heros.    Paris,  1886.    In  Krotkaia, 
^  infra. 

1859.  Diudiushkin  son.     [Uncle's  dream.] 

—  Uncle's  dream  and  The  permanent  husband. 

Tr.  by  F.  Whishaw.  London,  Vizetelly,  1888. 

—  Des  Onkels  Traum.     Aus  dem  Russ.  von 

L.  A.  Hauff.     Leipzig,  1889. 

—  Le  reve  de  1'oncle.     Tr.  par  E.  Halperine- 

Kaminsky.     Paris  [1895]. 
Selo  Stepanchikovo.     [Stepanchikovo  village.] 
297 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

—  The  friend  of  the  family,  and  The  gambler. 

London,  Vizetelly,  1887. 

—  Tollhaus  oder  Herrenhaus  ?    Aus  dem  Russ. 

von  L.  A.  Hauff.    Berlin  [1800]. 

1861-1862.    Zapiski  iz  mertvago   doma.     [Memoirs  of  a 
house  of  the  dead.] 

—  Buried   alive.     Tr.    by   Marie   von   Philo. 

London,  N.Y.,  1881. 

—  Aus  dem  todten  Hause.    Frei  nach  dem 

Russ.    Dresden,  1886. 

—  Souvenirs  de  la  maison  des  morts.    Tr.  par 

E.  M.  de  Vogue.     Paris,  1886. 

—  Prison  life  in  Siberia.     Tr.  par  H.  S.  Ed- 

wards.   London,  N.Y.,  1887. 

—  Memoiren  aus  einem   Totenhaus.     libers. 

von  Hans  Moser.    Leipzig,  1890. 

—  Erinnerungen    aus    dem     todten    Hause. 

Ubers.  von  L.  A.  Hauff.    Berlin,  1890. 
Unicizhennye  i  oskorblenye.     [Humiliated  and 
insulted.] 

—  Humilies  et  offenses.     Tr.  par  Ed.  Hum- 

bert.    Paris,  1884. 

—  Erniedrigte    und    Beleidigte.     Ubers.    von 

Konst.  Jurgens.    Berlin,  1885. 

—  Injury  and  insult.    Tr.   by  F.   Whishaw. 

London,  Vizetelly,  1886. 

1862.  Skvernii  anekdot.     [A  bad  story.] 

—  Eine  heikle  Geschichte.     Deutsch  von  Aug. 

Scholz.  JBerlin,_i889. 

1863.  Zimniia  zamietki  o  lietnikh  o  vpechatlieniiakh. 

[Winter  meditations  on  summer  impres- 
sions.] 

1864.  Zapiski  iz  podpol'ia.     [Memoirs  of  the  slums.] 

—  L'esprit  souterrain.     Paris,  1886.    In  The 

landlady,  supra. 
298 


LIST  OF   PUBLICATIONS 

—  Aus   dem   dunkelsten   Winkel   der   Gross- 

stadt[:    the    last    five    chapters    of    the 
Memoirs].     Berlin,  1895. 

—  Le  sous-sol,  suivi  de  deux  nouvelles  in6dites. 

Tr.  par  J.  W.  Bienstock.     Paris,  1909. 

1865.  Krokodil.     [The  crocodile.] 

1866.  Prestupleni'e  i  nakazanle.      [Crime  and  punish- 

ment.] 

—  Raskolnikow.    libers,   von   Wilh.   Henkel. 

Leipzig,  1882. 

—  Le  crime  et  le  chatiment.    Tr.  par  Victor 

Derely.     Paris,  1884. 

—  Crime    and    punishment.    London,    Vize- 

telly,  1886. 

—  Schuld  und  Siihne.     Leipzig,  1888. 

—  Crime  et  chatiment.    Drame  en  7  tableaux, 

tire  par  Paul  Ginisty  et  Hugues  Le  Roux 
du  roman.     Paris,  1889. 

—  Raskolnikow's  Schuld  und  Siihne.   Deutsch 

von  P.  Styczynski.     Berlin  [1891]. 

—  Raskolnikow;    oder,   Schuld    und    Siihne. 

Ubers.  von  A.  Kotulski.    Berlin  [1907]. 

1867.  Igrok.     [The  gambler.] 

—  The  gambler.     London,   1887.    In  Friend 

of  the  family,  supra. 

—  Le  joueur,  et  Les  nuits  blanches.    Tr.  par 

E.  Halperine.     Paris,  1887. 

—  Der  Spieler.    Aus  dem  Russ.-von  A.  Scholz. 

Berlin,  1888. 

1868.  Idiot. 

—  L'idiot.    Tr.  par  Victor  Der61y.    Paris,  1887. 

—  The  idiot.      Tr.  by  F.  Whishaw.    London, 

Vizetelly,  1887. 

—  Der    Idiot.     Deutsch    von    Aug.    Scholz. 

Berlin,  1889. 
299 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

—  Aufzeichnungen    eines     Schwindsiichtigen. 
_  [From  The  idiot.]    Berlin,  1891. 

1870.  Viechnyi  muzh.     [The  eternal  husband.] 

—  The  permanent  husband.    London,   1888. 

In  Uncle's  dream,  supra. 

—  Der  Hahnrei.    Deutsch  von  Aug.  Scholz. 

Berlin,  1888. 

—  Der    Gatte.    Deutsch    von    Aug.    Scholz. 

Berlin,  1889. 

—  L'eternel    man.    Tr.    par    N.    Halperine- 
^   Kaminsky.     Paris,  1896. 

1871-1872.    Biesy.     [Possessed  by  devils.] 

—  Les    possedes.    Tr.    par    Victor    Der61y. 

Paris,  1886. 

—  Die  Besessenen.     Deutsch  von  Hub.  Putze. 

Dresden,  1888. 
1875.  Podrostok.     [The  Hobbledehoy.] 

—  Junger  Nachwuchs.     libers,  von  W.  Stein. 

Leipzig,  1886. 

—  Un  adolescent.     Tr.  par  J.  W.  Bienstock 

et  F.  Feneon.    Paris,  1902. 

—  Ein     Werdender.     Deutsch     von      Korfiz 

Holm.     Miinchen,  1905. 

1876-1877.  Dnevniak  pisatelia.  [Diary  of  a  writer.] 
(Began  in  January,  1876,  as  a  monthly, 
but  its  regular  appearance  stopped  with 
the  December  number  of  1877.  A  num- 
ber was  issued  in  August,  1880,  and 
another,  the  last,  in  January,  1881.) 

—  Journal    d'un    ecrivain.     Tr.    par    J.    W. 

Bienstock  et  J.  A.  Nau.     Paris,  1904. 

—  Krotkaia.     Tr.   par  E.   Halperine.     Paris, 

1886.     (From  the  Diary  for  1876.) 

—  Krotkaja.     Deutsch  von  M.  von  Brondsted. 

Dresden,  1887. 
300 


LIST  OF  PUBLICATIONS 

—  Noel  russe.     Tr.  par  J.  Grzybowski  et  Emile 

Asse.     Chateaudun,     1894.     (From     the 
Diary.) 

1879-1880.    Brat'ia   Karamazovy.     [The   Brothers   Kara- 
mazov.] 

—  Die  Briider  Karamasow.    Leipzig,  1884. 

—  Les  freres  Karamazov.      Tr.  et  adapt6  par 

E.   Halperine-Kaminsky  et  Ch.   Morice. 
Paris,  1888. 

—  Les  precoces.      Tr.  par   E.   Halpe"rine-Ka- 

minsky.     (From  Part  4  of   the  Brothers 
Karamazov.)     Paris,  1889. 

—  Les    freres    Karamazov.     Tr.    par   J.    W. 

Bienstock  et  Charles  Torquet.    Paris,  1906. 
Dostoevskii's  collected   works  were  published 
in  St.  Petersburg  in  1885-1886  in  6  vol- 
umes, and  in  1894-1895  in  12  volumes. 

NIKOLAI  VASIL'EVICH    GOGOL' 

31   March    (19    Mar.)    1809  to  4  March  (21   Feb.)   1852 

1829.  Hans  Kiichelgarten.     (Gogol  suppressed  this.) 

1829-1831.     Vechera  na  khutorie  bliz  Dikan'ki.     [Evenings 

on  the  farm  near  the  Dikanka.J 
Part  i.     Sorochinskaia  iarmarka.     [The  fair 

of  Sorochinska.]     1830. 
Vecher  nakanunie  Ivana  Kupala. 

[St.  John's  Eve.]     1829. 
Maiskaia   noch'    ili    utoplennitsa. 
[A    night     in    May;     or,    the 
drowned  woman.]     1829. 
—  A  May  evening.     Cosmopolitan 

Mag.,  May,  1887. 
Propavshaia  gramota.       [The  lost 
document.]     1831. 
301 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

Part  2.    Noch  pered  Rozhdestvom.     [The 
night  before  Christmas.]     1831. 

—  On    Christmas    Eve.     Tr.    by 
F.  Volkhovsky.       Free  Russia, 
vol.  10,  no.  12. 

Strashnaia  mest'.     [A  horrible  re- 
venge.]    1831. 

Ivan  Fedorovich  Shpon'ka  i  ego 
tetushka.        [Ivan     Fedorovich 
Shpon'ka  and  his  aunt.]     1831. 
Zakoldovannoe   miesto.     [The  en- 
chanted spot.]     1831. 
—  Les   veillees   de    1'Ukraine.      Tr.    par    E. 

Halperine-Kaminsky.     Paris,  1890. 
1830.  Ostranitsa. 

1831-1833.    Nachatyia  poviesti.    [Unfinished  tales.] 
1831-1833.     Mirgorod.  _  _ 

Part  i.    Starosvietskie  pomieshchiki.  [Old- 
fashioned  farmers.  ]     1 83  2 . 
Taras  Bulba.     1834. 

—  Taras  Bulba.     Aus  dem  Russ. 
von  W.  Lange.    Leipzig  [1878]. 

—  Tarass    Boulba.     Tr.    par    L. 
Viardot.    Paris,  1853. 

—  Taras  Bulba.     Tr.  by  Isabel  F. 
Hapgood.    N.Y.,Crowell[i886J. 

—  Taras    Bulba.    Tr.     by   Jere- 
miah    Curtin.      N.Y.,     Alden, 
1888. 

Part  2.    Bii.  ^1833. 

Poviest'  o  torn,  kak  possorilsia 
Ivan  Ivanovich  s  Ivanom  Niki- 
forovichem.  [How  Ivan  Ivan- 
ovich quarrelled  with  Ivan  Niki- 
forovich.]  1831. 
302 


LIST  OF  PUBLICATIONS 

—  Wie  Iwan  Iwanowitsch  sich  mit 
Iwan  Nikiforowitsch  verun- 
einigte.  In  R.  Lippert's  Nor- 
disches  Novellenbuch.  Leipzig, 
1846. 

1831-1835.    Arabeski.     (The  two  parts  include  the  follow- 
ing fiction.) 
Glava  iz  istoricheskago  romana.    [A  chapter 

from    a  historical  romance.]   1830. 
Portret.     [The  portrait.]     1835. 

—  The  portrait.      Blackwood's  Mag.  Oct., 
1847  ;  Living  Age,  Nov.,  1847. 

Nevskii  prospekt.     1834. 

—  Der  Nevski- Prospect.    Pentameron,  vol. 
£.    Leipzig,  1868. 

Pliennik.     [The  Captive,  a  fragment  of  a 

historical  novel.]     1830. 
Zapiski    sumashedshago.     [Memoirs   of   a 

madman.]     1834. 

—  Memoiren  eines  Wahnsinnigen.    Miin- 
chen,  1886. 

—  A  madman's  diary.    In  E.  L.  Voynich's 
The  humour  of  Russia.    London,  1895. 

1835.  Koliaska.     [The  carriage.] 

Al'fred.    [Alfred.    The  beginning  of  a  tragedy 
from  English  history.] 

1836.  Utro  dielovogo  chelovieka.     [The  morning  of  a 

business  man.] 

Teatral'    nyi    raziezd    poslie    novoi    komedii. 
[On  the  way  home  from  the  theatre  after  a 

new  comedy.] 
Peterburgskiia    zapiski.        [Memoirs    of     St. 

Petersburg.] 
—  Petersburger     Skizzen.       Ubers.    von    H. 

Gerschmann.     Berlin,  1003. 

303 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

Nos.    [The  Nose.] 

—  Le   nez.    In    Golschmann's   L'ame    russe. 

Paris,  1896. 
Revizor.     [The  inspector-general.) 

—  Re  visor.     Tr.  par  Marmier.     Paris,    1853. 

In  Les  deux  heritages. 

—  L'inspecteur  en  tournee.     Neuchatel,  1874. 

—  Revis6r.    Tr.  par  Challandes.     Paris,  1875. 

—  Der    Revisor.     Deutsch    von    W.    Lange. 

Leipzig  [i88i]._ 

—  Der  Revisor.     Ubers.  von  N.  Tichonrawow. 

HaUe,  1894. 

—  The   inspector.     Tr.    by   T.    Hart-Davies. 

Calcutta,  1890;   London,  Thacker,  1892. 

—  The    inspector-general.       Tr.    by   A.    A. 

Sykes.    London,  Scott  [1892]. 

—  Revisor.     Tr.  par  E.  Gothi.     Paris,  1893. 

—  Revizor.     Tr.  for  the  Yale  Dramatic  Asso- 

ciation by  Max  S.  Mandell.    New  Haven, 
1908. 

1839.  Shinel'.    [The  mantle.] 

—  Le  manteau.     Tr.  par  X.  Merimle.    In  Au 

bord  de  la  Neva.     Paris,  1856. 

—  Der   Mantel.    In   Russische   Geschichten. 

Dresden,  1883. 

—  The  cloak.     Short  Stories,  1891. 
Zhenit'ba.     [Marriage.] 

—  Marriage.    In  E.  L.  Voynich's  The  humour 

of  Russia.     London,  1895. 

1840.  Rim. 

1842.  Tiazhba.^  [The  lawsuit.] 

Lakeiskaia.     [The  ante-chamber.] 
Otryvok.     [The  fragment.] 

1846.  Pokhozhdeni'e  Chichikova  ili  Mertvyia  dushi. 

[Chichikov's  Journeys ;  or,  Dead  souls.] 

304 


LIST  OF  PUBLICATIONS 

—  Die  todten  Seelen ;   iibertr.  von  P.  L6ben- 

stein.     Leipzig,  1846. 

—  Home  life  in  Russia.     London,  Hurst,  1854. 

—  Les   ames   mortes.    Tr.   par   E.    Moreau. 

Paris,  1858. 

—  Les  ames  mortes.      Tr.  par  E.  Chamere. 

Paris,  1859. 

—  Tchitchikoff's  Journeys ;    or,  Dead  Souls. 

Tr.  by  Isabel  F.  Hapgood.    N.Y.,  Crowell 
[1886]. 

—  Dead  souls.    London,  Vizetelly,  1887. 

—  Dead  Souls.    London,  Maxwell,  1887. 
Gogol's  collected  works  were  first  issued  in  St.  Peters- 
burg in  1842;  in  1901  the  i6th  edition  was  issued  in  12 
volumes. 

The  following  collected  translations  have  been  published : 
Nouvelles  russes.     Tr.  par  L.  Viardot.     Paris,  1845. 
Russische  Novellen.     Nach  L.  Viardot  iibertr.  von  H.  Bode. 

Leipzig,   1846.     (Taras  Bulba.     Der  Konig  der  Erd- 

geister.    Das  Tagebuch  eines  Narren.    Ein  Bild  der 

guten  alten  Zeit.     Die  Kalesche.) 
Cossack   tales.     Tr.  by  George  Tolstoy.    London    [1860]. 

(The  night  of  Christmas  Eve.     Tarass  Boolba.) 
Altvaterische  Leute,  und  andere  Erzahlungen.     Deutsch  von 

J.  Meixner.     Stuttgart,  1882. 
Kleinrussische    Landeleute.      In    Russische    Geschichten. 

Dresden,  1883. 
Phantasien  und  Geschichten.     Deutsch  von  W.  Lange  und  P. 

Lobenstein.    Leipzig,  1883.     (Der  Mantel.    DieNacht 

vor    Weihnachten.      Der    Hader    zweier    Mirgoroder 

Grossen.    Eine  Mainacht.    DieNase.    Ein  Landjunker. 

Der  Konig  der  Erdgeister.     Der  Zauberer.     Memoiren 

eines  Wahnsinnigen.) 
St.  John's  Eve,  and  other  stories ;    from  the  Russian  by 

Isabel  F.  Hapgood.     N.Y.,  Crowell  [1886].     (Old-fash- 
x  305 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

ioned  farmers.    How  Ivan  Ivanovitch  quarrelled.     The 
portrait.    The  cloak.) 

Taras  Bulba:  also  St.  John's  Eve,  and  other  stories.  Lon- 
don, Vizetelly,  1887. 

Kleinrussische  Landeleute.  Der  Mantel.  Die  Mainacht. 
Dresden,  1891. 

The  Cloak,  The  portrait,  and  Old-fashioned  farmers.  In 
Greville's  Wayward  Dosia.  Chicago,  1891. 

Contes  et  nouvelles.  La  terrible  vengeance.  Le  nez. 
Memoires  d'un  fou.  La  place  ensorcelee.  Tr.  par  H. 
Chirol.  Paris,  1899. 

Evenings  in  Little  Russia.  Tr.  by  Edna  W.  Underwood 
and  Wm.  H.  Cline.  Evanston,  1903.  (The  fair  of 
Sorotchinetz.  An  evening  in  May.  Midsummer  even- 
ing.) 

MAKSIM  GOR'KII 

Aleksiei  Maksimovich  Pieshkov 
26  March  (14  Mar.)  1869 

1892.  Makar  Chudra. 

—  Makar   Chudra.    Tr.   by   M.   Mojaysky. 

Monthly  Review,  November,  1901. 
O  chizhie,  kotoryi  Igal,  i  o  diatlie-liubitelie 
istiny.     [About  the  lying  greenfinch  and 
the  woodpecker  who  loved  the  truth.] 

1893.  Emel'ian  Piliai. 

1894.  Died  Arkhip  i  Len'ka.     [Grandfather  Arkhip 

and  Lenka.] 
1894-1895.     Chelkash. 

—  Tchelkache.    Tr.    by    Katherine    Wylde. 

Fortnightly  Rev.,  December,  1901 ;   Living 
Age,  25  January,  1902. 

1895.  Starukha  Izergil'.^  [The  old  woman  Izergil.] 
Odnazhdy    osen'iu.     [It    happened    once    in 

autumn.] 

306 


LIST  OF  PUBLICATIONS 

Oshibka.     [A  mistake.] 

Na  soli.     [In  the  salt  works.] 

Skazka.     [A  fairy  tale.] 

O  malen'koi  feie  i  molodom  chabanie.     [The 

little  fairy  and  the  young  shepherd.] 
Na  Chernomor'ie.     [On  the  Black  Sea.] 

1896.  Na  plotakh.    [On  a  raft.] 

Mo!  sputnik.     [My  fellow  traveller.] 

Dielo  s  zastezhkami.     [The  affair  with   the 

clasps.] 
Piesnia  o  sokolia.     [The  song  of  the  falcon.] 

—  The  song  of  the  falcon.     Tr.  by  E.  J.  Dillon. 

Contemporary  Rev.,  March,  1902;   Every- 
body's Mag.,  September,  1905. 

Boles'.    [Suffering.] 

Toska.     [Heartache.] 

—  Spleen.    Deutsch  von  Korfiz  Holm.    Mlin- 

chen,  1906. 
Konovalov. 

—  Konovalov.     Paris,  1905. 

Khan  i  ego  syn.     [The  Khan  and  his  son.] 

—  The  Khan   and  his   son.      Monthly   Rev., 

February,  1902. 
Vyvod.     [The  conclusion.] 

1897.  Suprugi  Orlovy.     [The  Orlov  couple.] 

—  The  Orloff  couple.     Tr.  by  Emily  Jakow- 

leff  and  Dora  B.   Montefiore.    London, 
Heinemann,  1901. 

—  Orloff  and  his  wife.     Tr.  by  Isabel  F.  Hap- 

good.    N.Y.,  Scribner,  1902. 

—  Orlow  und  seine  Frau.     Ubers.  von  L.  A. 

Hauff.     Berlin,  1902. 

—  Die  Orlows.     Berlin,  1903. 

—  Das  Ehepaar.    Deutsch  von  Anna  Lubinow. 

Berlin,  1003. 

307 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

—  Ehepaar    Orlow.    Aus    dem    Russ.     von 

Stefania  Goldenring.     Berlin,  1903. 
Byvshi  liudi. 

—  Creatures  that  once  were  men.      Tr.  by 

J.  K.  M.  Shirazi.     Introduction  by  G.  K. 

Chesterton.     London,  Rivers,  1905. 
Ozornik.     [The  insolent  man.] 
Varen'ka  Olesova. 

—  Ein  junges  Madchen.     Deutsch  von  L.  M. 

Wiegandt.     Dresden,  1901. 

—  Warenjka    Olessowa.     Deutsch  von    Elis. 

und  Yorik  Georgy.     Leipzig,  1902. 

—  Ein  wildes  Madchen.     Ubers.  von  Stefania 

Goldenring.     Berlin,  1902. 

—  Varenka  Olessova.     Tr.  par  S.  Kikina  et 

P.  G.  La  Chesnais.     Paris,  1902. 

—  Warenka  Olessowa.    Deutsch  von  Eugenie 

Chmielnitzky.    Berlin,  1903. 

—  A  naughty  girl.    London,  Maclaren,  1905. 
Tovarishchi.     [Comrades.] 

—  Comrades  !    Craftsman,  December,  1906. 

—  Comrades.     London,  Hodder,  1007. 
V  stepi.     [In  the  steppe.] 

—  Dans  la  steppe.    Tr.  par  S.  M.  Persky. 

Paris  [1901]. 
Malva. 

—  Malwa.    Ubers.  von  L.  M.  Wiegandt.    Ber- 

lin, 1901. 

—  The  Orloff  couple  and  Malva.     Tr.  by  E. 

Jakowleff  and  D.   B.   Montefiore.     Lon- 
don, Heinemann,  1001. 

—  Malwa.    Aus  dem  Russ.  von  Theo.  Kroczek. 

Berlin,  1905. 

—  Malva.    Paris,  1905. 

larmarka  v  Goltvie.    [The  fair  in  Goltva.] 
308 


LIST  OF   PUBLICATIONS 

Zazubrina. 

—  Der    griine    Kater.     Ubers.    von    Stefania 

Goldenring.     Dresden,  1901. 
Skuki  radi.     [To  while  away  the  time.] 

1898.  Kain  i  Artem.     [Cain  and  Artem.] 

—  Cain   et  Arteme.    Tr.  de  S.  M.  Persky. 

Paris,  1901. 
Druzhki.     [Chums.] 
Prokhodimets.     [The  sharper.] 
Chitatel.     [The  reader.] 

—  The  reader.    Poet  Lore,  Summer,  1904. 

1899.  Kirilka.^ 

O  chortie.    [About  the  devil.] 

—  The  devil.    Tr.  by  Leo  Wiener.    National 

Mag.,  November,  1901. 
Eshche  o  chortie.     [Again  about  the  devil.] 
Vas'ka  krasny*.     [Red  Vaska.] 
Foma  Gordieev. 

—  Thomas    Gordeieff.    Tr.    par    Mme.    B. 

Marinovitch.     Paris  [1901]. 

—  Foma  Gordjejew.    Ubers.  von  Klara  Brau- 

ner.    Stuttgart,  1901. 

—  Foma   Gordyeeff.    Tr.  by  Isabel  F.  Hap- 

good.    N.Y.,  Scribner,  1901. 

—  Foma    Gordeyev.    Tr.    by   H.    Bernstein. 

N.Y.,  Ogilvie,  1001. 

—  Man   who   was   afraid.    Tr.    by   Herman 

Bernstein.     London,  Unwin,  1905. 
Dvadtsat  shest  i  odna.     [Twenty-six  men  and 
a  girl.] 

—  Twenty-six  men  and  a  girl.    Tr.  by  Emily 

Jakowleff  and  Dora  B.  Montefiore.    Lon- 
don, Duckworth,  1902. 

1900.  The  peasants. 
Troe.    [Three.] 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

—  Three  men.    Tr.  by  Charles  Home.    Lon- 

don, Isbister,  1902. 

—  Three  of  them.    Tr.  by  A.  Linden.    Lon- 

don, Unwin,  1902. 

—  Les  trois.    Tr.  par  Henry  Martel.     Paris, 

1902. 

—  Die    Drei.    Aus    dem    Russ.    von    Mich. 

Feofanoff.     Leipzig,  1902. 

—  Drei  Menschen.    Aus  dem  Russ.  von  Aug. 

Scholz.     Berlin,  1902. 
Na  dnie.     [On  the  bottom.] 

—  Verlorene  Leute.    Deutsch  von  A.  Scholz. 

Berlin,  1901. 

—  Im   Asyl    fur    Obdachlose.    Deutsch   von 

Laura  Feil.     Berlin,  1902. 

—  Nachtasyl.     Deutsch  von  August   Scholz. 

Miinchen,  1903. 

—  Gesunkene   Leute.    Aus    dem    Russ.    von 

Stefania  Goldenring.     Berlin,  1903. 

—  Dans  les  bas-fonds.     Tr.  de  M.  E.  Semenoff. 

Paris,  1903. 

—  Dans  les  bas-fonds.     Tr.  par  E.  Halperine- 

Kaminsky.     Paris,  1905. 

1901.  Aforismy.     [Aphorisms.] 

1902.  Mieshchane.     [The  middle  class.] 

—  Die  Kleinbiirger.     Szenen  im  Hause  Bess- 

sjemenows.    Deutsch  von  August  Scholz. 
Berlin,  1902. 

—  Les   petits   bourgeois    (La   famille   Bezse- 

menoff).     Tr.    par    E.    Semenoff    et    E. 
Smirnow.     Paris,  1902. 

—  The  smug  citizen.    Tr.  by  Edwin  Hopkins. 

Poet  Lore,  Winter,  1906. 

1903.  Cheloviek.     [Man.] 

—  Man.    Monthly  Review,  March,  1905. 

310 


LIST  OF  PUBLICATIONS 

—  The  march  of  man.    Cosmopolitan  Mag., 

July,  1905. 

1904.  Dachniki.     [Summer-folk.] 

—  H6tes  d'ete.    Tr.  par  S.   Persky.    Paris, 

1905. 

—  Sommergaste.    Deutsch  von  August  Scholz. 

Berlin,  1906. 
Krov'.  [Blood.] 
Tiur'ma.  [The  prison.] 

—  Im  Gefangniss.    Ubertr.  von   Julie  Gold- 

baum.    Wien,  1905. 

—  En    prison.    Tr.    par    S.    Persky.    Paris, 

1905. 

—  In    prison.    Albany   Review,   October-No- 

vember, 1907. 

Razskaz'  Filippa  Vasil'evicha.    [A  story  by 
Philip  Vasil'evich.] 

—  Philip    Vasilyevich's    story.     Independent, 

7  September,  1905. 

1905.  Bukoemov',  Karp'  Ivanovich. 

Dieti  solntsa.     [The  children  of  the  sun.] 

—  The  children  of  the  sun.    Tr.  by  Archibald 

John  Wolfe.    Poet  Lore,  Summer,  1906. 

—  Kinder  der  Sonne.     Ubers.  von  Alexander 

von  Huhn.     Berlin,  1906. 
Piesnia  o  bureviestnikie.    [Song  of  the  storm 
herald.] 

—  L'annonciateur  de  la  tempe'te.    Tr.  par  E. 

S6menoff.     Paris,  1905. 

—  L'annonciateur    des    tempe'tes.      Tr.    par 

E.  M.  de  Vogii6  (in  his  Maxima  Gorky. 
Paris,  1905). 

1906.  Varvary.     [The  barbarians.] 

—  Barbaren.    Deutsch  von  Use  Frapan-Akun- 

ian.    Berlin  [1906]. 

3" 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

Moe  interv'iu.     [My  interviews.] 

I.  Korol',  kotoryi  vysoko  derzhit'.     [The 

king  who  holds  high  his  standard.] 
II.  Prekrasnaia      Frantsua.         [Beautiful 
France.] 

—  La  belle    France.    Independent,   19 
Sept.  1907. 

III.  Tsar.     [The  Czar.] 

IV.  Odin'  iz'  korolei   respublik.     [One    of 

the  kings  of  the  republic.] 
V.  Zhrets'  morali.     [The  priest  of  morals.] 
V      Amerikie.       Ocherki.        [In      America. 

Sketches.] 
I.  Gorod  zheltago  d'lavola.     [The  city  of 

the  yellow  devil.] 

II.  Tsarstvo    skuki.     [The    kingdom    of 
ennui.] 

—  Boredom.      Independent,     8    Aug. 
1007- 

HE.  Mov'.     [The  mob.] 

—  Mob.     Cosmopolitan  Mag.,  Novem- 
ber, 1906. 

IV.  Charli  Men.    [Charlie  Mann.] 
Mat'.     [Mother.] 

—  Mother.    Appleton's  Mag.,  December,  1906. 

—  Mother.    N.Y.,  Appleton,  1907. 

—  Die    Mutter.    Ubers.    von    Adolf    Hess. 

Berlin,  1907. 

—  La  mere.    Tr.  par  S.  Persky.    Paris,  1907. 
Vragi.     [The  enemies.] 

—  Die  Feinde.    Deutsch  von  O.  D.  Potthof. 

Berlin,  1906. 

1907.  Der  9.  Januar.     (In  russ.  Sprache.)     Berlin, 

^907. 

1908.  PosUedme.     [The  last  ones.] 

312 


LIST  OF   PUBLICATIONS 

—  Die  Letzten.     Deutsch  von   Carl  Ritter. 

Berlin,  1910. 
Ispovied.     [A  confession.] 

—  Eine  Beichte.     Ubers.  von  August  Scholz. 

Berlin,  1909. 

—  Une  confession.    Tr.  par  S.  Persky.     Paris, 

1009. 

—  A  confession.    London,  Everett,  1910. 
Tronulo. 

Zhizn'  menuzhnago  chelovieka.    [The  life  of  a 
useless  man.] 

—  The  spy.    The  story  of  a  superfluous  man. 

Tr.    by  Thos.  Seltzer.     N.Y.,   Huebsch, 
1908. 

—  L'espion.    Tr.  par  Serge  Persky.     Paris, 

1910. 

Soldaten.       Skizzen.       (In    russ.    Sprache.) 
Berlin,  1908. 

1909.  Lie  to.     [Summer.] 

1910.  Gorodok'  Okurov'.    Khronika.    [Chronicle  of 

the  little  town  of  Okurov.] 
Chudaki.     [Queer  fellows.] 
Kinder.     Ein  Schwank.      (In  russ.  Sprache.) 

Berlin,  1910. 
Sonderlinge.      Drama.      (In    russ.    Sprache.) 

Berlin,  1910. 
Matwej   Koschemjakin.     Roman.      (In  russ. 

Sprache.)     Berlin,  1910. 

Gorki's  collected  stories  were  published  in  6  volumes  in 
St.  Petersburg  in  1903.  The  following  collected  translations 
have  been  published  :  — 

Erziihlungen.     Ubers.  von  Mich.  Feofanoff.     6  vols.,  Leip- 
zig, 1901-1902. 

Ausgewahlte    Erzahlungen.     Deutsch    von    A.    Scholz.     7 
vols.,  Berlin,  1901-1902. 

313 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

Ausgewahlte  Werke.     Deutsch  von  P.  Jakofleff  und  C. 

Berger.    6  vols.,  Leipzig,  1901-1907. 
Das  Opfer  der  Langeweite.    Die  Sonne  der  Kerkerlinge. 

Der  rote  Waska.    Deutsch  von  C.  Berger.    Berlin, 

1901. 
Ein    sonderbarer    Leser.      Wanderungen    eines    Teufels. 

Deutsch  von  P.  Jakofleff.    Leipzig,  1901. 
Mein  Reisegefahrte  und  zwei  andere  Erzahlungen.     Ubers. 

von  H.  Mexin  und  Ph.  Losch.    Leipzig,  1901. 
Tschelkasch.  Bolesy.    Lied  vom  Falken.    Deutsch  von  C. 

Berger,  Leipzig,  1901. 
Orloff  and  his  wife.    Tales  of  the  barefoot  brigade.     (Ko- 

novaloff.    The   Khan   and    his  son.      The  exorcism. 

Men  with  pasts.    The  insolent  man.     Varenka  Olesoff . 

Comrades.)    Tr.  by  Isabel  F.  Hapgood.    N.Y.,  Scrib- 

ner,  1901. 
Les  dechus;   le  menage  Orlov;   les  ex-hommes.     Tr.  par 

S.  Kikina  et  P.  G.  La  Chesnais.     Paris,  1901. 
Zwei  Novellen  (Malwa.  Konowalow).     Ubers.  von  Klara 

Brauner.     Stuttgart,  1901. 
Dans  la  steppe.     Recits  de  la  vie  des  vagabonds.     Tr.  par 

S.  M.  Persky.     Paris,  1902.     (Dans  la  steppe.     Grand- 

pere  Arkhip  et  Lenka.     Le  chant  du  faucon.     Yeme- 

lian  Pilaie.     Le  Khan  et  son  fils.     Sasoubrina.     Makar 

Tchoudra.     Vingt-six  et  une.     La  vieille  Iserguile.) 
Twenty-six  and  one,  and  other  stories.     Tr.  by  Ivan  Stran- 

nik.    N.Y.,  Taylor  &  Co.,  1902.     (Twenty-six  and  one. 

Tchelkache.    Malva.) 
Tales  from  Gorky.     Tr.  by  R.  Nisbet  Bain.     N.Y.,  Funk 

&  Wagnalls,  1902.     (In  the  steppe.    Twenty-six  of  us 

and  one  other.     One  autumn  night.     A  rolling  stone. 

The  green  kitten.     Comrades.    Her  lover.     Chelkash. 

Chums.) 
L'Angoisse  et  autres  nouvelles.    Tr.  par  S.  Kikina  et  P.  G. 

La  Chesnais.    Paris,  1902. 
314 


LIST  OF  PUBLICATIONS 

Sechs  und  zwanzig    und  eine  und    andere    Erzahlungen. 

IJbers.  von  L.  M.  Weigandt.     Berlin,  1902. 
Ehemalige  Leute.    In  der  Steppe.     Freunde.     Deutsch  von 

C.  Berger.    Berlin,  1902. 
Kain  und  Artem  und  andere  Geschichten.    Deutsch  von 

J.  Aisinmann.     Berlin,  1902. 
Der  Hallunke  und  andere  Geschichten.     Deutsch  von  N. 

Skyrin.    Berlin,  1902. 

The  outcasts  and  other  stories.     London,  Unwin,  1902. 
Der  Vagabund  und  andere  Erzahlungen.    Ubers.  von  F. 

Bertuch.    Leipzig,  1002. 
Malwa.    Die  Geschichte  eines  Verbrechens.    Deutsch  von 

F.  Bertuch.    Leipzig,  1002. 
Wania.    Recits  de  la  vie  russe.    Tr.  par  S.  M.  Persky. 

Paris,  1902. 
Ein  Verbrechen  und  andere   Geschichten.    Deutsch  von 

Korfiz  Holm.     Miinchen,  1002. 
Tschelkasch.    Malva.    Yemeljan  Pilaj.    Deutsch  von  Wilh. 

Thai.    Berlin,  1902. 
Die  rote  Waska  und  andere  Novellen.   Ubers.  von  Stefania 

Goldenring.     Berlin,  1002. 
Twenty-six  men  and  a  girl.     Chelkash.     My  fellow  traveller. 

On  a  raft.    Tr.  by  Emily  Jakowleff  and  Dora  B.  Monte- 

fiore.     London,  Duckworth,  1002. 
Gram  und  Anderes.    Aus  dem  Russ.  von  Anna  Schapire. 

Berne,  1902. 

Tschelkasch  und  Anderes.     Berlin,  1903. 
Der  Vagabund.     Malwa.     Die  Geschichte  mit  dem  Silber- 

schloss.    Deutsch  von  Stefania  Goldenring.    Berlin,  1903. 
Mein  Reisegefahrte  und  andere  Novellen.   Ubertr.  von  Theo. 

Kroczek.     Halle,  1903. 
Der  Vagabund  und  andere  Novellen.    Ubertr.  von  Theo. 

Kroczek.     Halle,  1903. 
Zigeuner  und  andere   Geschichten.     Deutsch   von   Korfiz 

Holm.    Miinchen,  1903. 

315 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

Der  Barfiissler.     Tschelkasch.     Deutsch  von  Erich  Holm. 

Berlin,  1903. 
Blaue  Funken.     Grossvater  Archipp  und  Ljonka.     Malwa. 

Deutsch  von  C.  Berger.     Berlin,  1903. 
Die  Geschichte  eines  Verbrechens  und  andere  Geschichten. 

Ubers.  von  Josephsohn.     Berlin,  1903. 
Kain  und  Artem.    Jemeljan  Pilay.    Ausfahrt.     Sasubrina. 

Das  Lied  vom  Sturmvogel.     Der  Chan  und  sein  Sohn. 

Einmal  im  Herbst.    Die  Holzflosser.    Deutsch  von  C. 

Berger.     Berlin,  1903. 
Von  der  Landstrasse  und  Anderes.     Aus  dem  Russ.  von 

Theo.  Kroczek.    Halle,  1003. 
Tales;    from  the  Russian  by  C.  Alexandroff.    N.Y.,  Int. 

Library  Co.,  1903. 
Ausgewahlte  Werke.    Deutsch  von   C.   Berger.    6   vols., 

Berlin,  1903. 
Ausgewahlte    Erzahlungen.     Deutsch    von   A.    Scholz.     6 

vols.,  Berlin,  1903-1906. 

Gesammelte  Werke.     64  Liefgn.     Berlin,  1903-1904. 
Ein  Abenteuer  und  andere  Novellen.     Ubers.  von  Klara 

Brauner.     Wien,  1904. 
Auswahl  aus   seiner  Schriften.    Hrsg.   von  Aug.   Scholz. 

Stuttgart,  1904. 
Die  alte  Isergil   und   andere   Erzahlungen.     Ubertr.   von 

Alexis  von  Krusenstjerna.    Leipzig,  1904. 
L'amour  mortel,  suivi  de  Vaska  le  Rouge,  Dans  la  nuit. 

Paris,  1905. 
Gefallenes  VTolk.    Im  Gram.    Aus  dem  Russ.  von  Theo. 

Kroczek.    Berlin,  1905. 
Der  rote  Waska  und  andere  Novellen.    Ubers.  von  Stefania 

Goldenring.    Berlin,  1905. 
Konowalow.    Tschelkasch.    Aus  dem    Russ.   von    Theo. 

Kroczek.     Berlin,  1905. 
Der  Tunichtgut  und  andere  Erzahlungen.     Deutsch  von 

Alexis  von  Krusenstjerna.     Leipzig,  1905. 
316 


LIST  OF   PUBLICATIONS 

Der  Mensch  und  Das  Lied  vom  Falken.    Deutsch  von 

M.Abel.     Berlin,  1905. 
Heartache,  and  The  old  woman  Izerofel.    London,  Mac- 

laren,  1905. 
Konowalow.     Grossvater  Archip.    Ubertr.  von  Alexis  von 

Krusenstjerna.  Leipzig,  1906. 
Novellen  und  Skizzen.  Graz,  1906. 
The  individualists.  Cain  and  Arteme.  Strange  companion. 

London,  Maclaren,  1906. 
Ein    Verbrechen    und    andere    Erzahlungen.     Ubers.    von 

Theo.  Kroczek.     Berlin,  1907. 

Esclaves :  nouvelles.     Tr.  par  S.  Persky.     Paris,  1908. 
Boles  und  Anderes.     Aus  dem  Russ.  von  Eug.   Chmiel- 

nitsky.    Berlin,  1910. 


ALEKSANDR  IVANOVICH  KUPRIN 

1870- 

IQOJ.  Razskazy.     [Tales.] 

Konokrady.     [Horse  thieves.] 

Trus.    [The  coward.] 

Mi'rnoe  zhiti'e.     [A  peaceful  life.] 

1905.  Poldinok.     [The  duel.] 

1907.  Slon.    [The  elephant.] 
Alesia. 

1908.  Na  pokoie.    [In  retirement.] 
Morskaia  boliezn'.     [Seasickness.] 
Dietskle  razskazy.    [Stories  for  children.] 
Uchenik.     [The  young  student.] 
Osennle  tsviety.    [The  flowers  of  autumn.] 
Posliednee  slovo.     [The  last  word.] 

1009.  Lavry.     [Laurels.] 

Umoristicheski'e  razskazy.     [Humorous  tales. 
(In  collaboration  with  L.  M.  Andreev). 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

1910.  Tost.    [The  toast.] 

Shtabs-kapitan  Rybnikov.    [Staff-captain  Ryb- 

nikov.] 

Rieka  zhizni.     [The  river  of  life.] 
S'  ulitsy.     [From  the  street.] 

Kuprin's  works  have  been  collected  in  6  volumes,  St. 
Petersburg,  1910.  The  following  translations  have  been 
published :  — 

Erzahlungen.     Ubers.  von  Heinrich  Harff.     Stuttgart,  1904. 
Der  Moloch  und  andere  Novellen.     Aus  dem  Russ.  von 

Jenny  Herzmark.     Wien,  1907. 
Das  Freudenhaus.    Deutsch  von  Siegfried  Brauner.    Berlin, 

1910. 

Das  Duell.    Ubers.  von  Adolf  Hess.    Stuttgart,  1905. 
Das  Duell.     Berlin,  1909. 
Une  petite  garnison  russe.  Tr.  par  Serge  Nidoine  et  P.  Yalb. 

Paris,  1905. 

In  honour's  name.    Tr.  by  W.  F.  Harvey.    London,  Ev- 
erett, 1907. 

Olessia.    London,  Sisley,  1908. 

Die  Gruft.    Aus  dem  Russ.  von  C.  Philips.    Miinchen,  1910. 
Et  Salomon  aima.    Tr.  par  le  comte  R.  Kapnist.    Paris, 
1910. 

LEV  NIKOLAEVICH  TOLSTOI 
9  September  (28  Aug.)  1828  to  20  November  (7  Nov.)  1910 

1852.  Die*tsvo.  JChildhood.] 

Utro  pomieshchika.     [A  morning  of  a  landed 

proprietor.] 

Kazaki.    [The  Cossacks.] 
Nabieg.     [The  invaders.] 

1854.  Unost'.     [Boyhood.] 

1855.  Rubka  liesa.     [The  cutting  of  the  forest.] 
1855-1856.     Sevastopol. 


LIST  OF  PUBLICATIONS 

1856,  Vstriecha  v  otriadle  s  moskovskim  znakomym. 

[Meeting  a  Moscow  acquaintance  at  the 

front.] 

Dva  gusara.     [Two  hussars.] 
Zapiski  markera.    [Memoirs  of  a  marker.] 

1857.  Otrochestvo.     [Youth.] 
Albert. 

Iz  zapisok  kniazia  D.  Nekhlmdova.    [From 
the  memoirs  of  Prince  Nekhliudov.] 

1859.  Tri  smerti.     [Three  deaths.] 
Semeinoe  schastie.     [Family  happiness.] 

1860.  Polikushka. 

1861.  Kholstomier.    [The  linen  measurer.] 
1864-1869.     Voma  i  mir.     [War  and  peace.] 
1873-1876.    Anna  Karenina. 

1878.  Dekabristy.    [The  Decembrists.] 

1881.  Cblem  liudi  zhivy.     [What  men  live  by.] 

1884.  The  three  hermits. 

1885.  Upustish'  ogon',  ne  potushish'.    [Neglect  the 

fire,  and  you  cannot  put  it  out.] 
Sviechka.    [The  candle.] 
Dva  starika.     [Two  old  men.] 
Gdie  Imbov'  tarn  i  Bog.     [Where  love  is,  there 

God  is  also.]  ^ 
Skazka  ob  Ivanie  Durakie.     [Story  of  Ivan 

the  Fool.] 

1886.  Smert'   Ivana   Il'icha.     [The  death   of    Ivan 

H'itch.] 

Narodnyia  legendy.     [Popular  legends.] 
Vlast'  t'my.     [The  power  of  darkness.] 
Nicholas  Stick. 

1889.  Plody  prosvfeshchenna.     [Fruits  of  enlighten- 

ment.] 

1800.  Khodite  v  sbietie  poka  est'  sbiet.    [Walk  in 

the  light  while  there  is  light.] 

319 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

Kreitserova  sonata.     [The  Kreutzer  sonata.] 
1892.  Three  sons. 

Laborer  Emelyan  and  the  empty  drum. 
1895.  Khoziain  i  rabotnik.     [Master  and  workman.] 

1899.  Boskreseni'e.     [Resurrection.] 

1903.  Esarhaddon,  King  of  Assyria. 

Work,  death,  sickness. 

Three  questions. 

Tolstoi's  collected  works  have  been  published  in  many 
editions  in  Russia  and  elsewhere.  In  English  we  have 
the  Novels  and  Other  Works  of  Lyof  N.  Tolstoi,  edited  by 
Nathan  Haskell  Dole,  and  published  by  Scribner  in  24  vol- 
umes ;  Complete  Works,  tr.  by  Louise  and  Aylmer  Maude, 
and  published  by  Funk  &  Wagnalls  in  26  volumes ;  Com- 
plete Works,  tr.  and  ed.  by  Leo  Wiener,  and  published  in 
24  volumes  by  Estes.  As  these  are  all  accessible,  the 
separate  translations  in  English,  French,  and  German  have 
not  been  mentioned. 

IVAN  SERGIEEVICH  TURGENEV 
9  November  (28  Oct.)  1818  to  3  September  (22  Aug.)  1883 

1843.  Neostorozhnost'.     [Carelessness.] 

1844.  Andrei  Kolosov. 

1845.  Bezdenezh'e.    [Lack  of  money.] 

1846.  Bretter.     [The  duellist.] 

Tri  portreta.    [Three  portraits.] 
Zhid.    [Slangy  epithet  for  the  Jew.] 

1847.  Pietushkov. 

Gdie  tonko,  tarn  i  rvetsia. 
1847-1851.     Zapiski  okhotnika.     [Memoirs  of  a  hunter.] 

1848.  Nakhliebnik.     [The  boarder.] 

1849.  Kholostiak.     [The  bachelor.] 

Zavtrak  u  predvoditella.     [Breakfast  with  the 
marshal  of  the  nobility.] 
320 


LIST  OF   PUBLICATIONS 

Miesiats  v  derevnie.     [A  month  in  the  country.] 

1850.  Dnevnik   lishniago   chelovieka.     [Diary   of   a 

superfluous  man.] 

1851.  Tri  vstriechi.    [Three  meetings.] 
Provints'ialka.     [Country  women.] 
Razgovor  na  bol'shoi  dorogie.    [A  conversation 

on  a  high  road.] 

1852.  Mumu. 

Postoialyi  dvor.     [The  country  inn.] 

1853.  Dva  priiatelia.     [Two  friends.] 

1854.  Zatish'e.     [The  cahn.] 

1855.  Rudin. 
Faust. 

lakov  Pasynkov. 

O  solovlakh.     [About  nightingales.] 

1857.  PoTezdka  v  polies'e.     [A  tour  in  the  forest.] 
Asia. 

1858.  Dvorianskoe  gmezdo.     [A  nobleman's  nest.] 

1859.  Nakanunle.     [On  the  eve.] 

1860.  Pervaia  luibov'.     [First  love.] 

Hamlet    i    Don-Kikhot.     [Hamlet    and    Don 
Quixote.] 

1861.  Ottsy  i  doeti.     [Fathers  and  children.] 
1863.  Prizraki.    [Visions.] 

1866.  Sobaka.     [The  dog.] 

1867.  Dym.     [Smoke.] 

Istoriia    leitenanta    Ergunova.     [History    of 
Lieutenant  Ergunov.] 

1868.  Neschastnaia.    [The  unhappy  girl.] 
Nashi  poslali.    [Our  own  have  sent  me.] 

1869.  Strannala  istoriia.     [A  strange  story.] 

1870.  Stepnol  Korol' Lir.    [King  Lear  of  the  Steppes.] 
Stuk,  Stuk,  Stuk. 

1871.  Veshniia  vody.    [Spring  floods.] 
Pegas.     [Pegasus.] 

Y  321 


ESSAYS  ON  RUSSIAN  NOVELISTS 

1874.  Punin  i  Baburin. 

Zapiski  okhotnika:  Zhivyia  moshchi.  [Me- 
moirs of  a  hunter :  A  living  relic.] 

1875.  Chasy.    [The  watch.] 

1876.  Nov'.     [Virgin  soil.] 
Son.     [The  dream.] 

Kroket  v  Vindzorie.  JCroquet  at  Windsor.] 

1877.  Razskaz   ottsa   Aleksieia.     [Story  of    Father 

^  Aleksiei.] 

1881.  Piesn'   torzhestvuiushchei    liubvi.     [Song    of 

triumphant  love.] 

Otryvki  iz  vospominaniii  svoikh  i  chuzhikh. 
[Fragmentary  reminiscences  of  friends  and 
strangers.] 

1882.  Stikhotvoreniia  v  prozie.     [Poetry  in  prose.] 
Klara  Milich. 

Turgenev's  collected  works  were  published  in  St.  Peters- 
burg in  1890-1891  in  10  volumes.  The  novels,  as  well  as 
short  tales,  translated  by  Constance  Garnett,  were  published 
in  London  by  Heinemann  (New  York,  Macmillan),  in  15 
volumes  in  1894-1899.  The  novels  and  stories,  translated  by 
Isabel  F.  Hapgood,  were  published  in  New  York  by  Scrib- 
ner  in  1903  in  16  volumes.  As  these  are  all  accessible,  the 
separate  translations  in  English,  French,  and  German  have 
not  been  mentioned. 


'HE  following  pages  contain  advertisements  of  books 
by  the  same  author  or  on  kindred  subjects. 


Essays  on  Modern  Novelists 

BY  WILLIAM  LYON  PHELPS 

MA.  Harvard,  Ph.D.  Yale;  formerly  Instructor  in  English  at 
Harvard ;  Lampson  Professor  of  English  Literature  at  Yale. 


"The  recent  volume  by  Professor  William  Lyon  Phelps, 
'  Essays  on  Modern  Novelists,'  will  make  an  unusually  strong 
appeal  to  the  lover  of  good  literature.  Professor  Phelps  is 
well  known  as  a  writer  on  literary  topics,  who  is  gifted  with  a 
clear  and  forceful  style,  and  is  able  to  command  the  attention 
of  his  reader  as  much  by  the  grace  and  vigor  of  his  diction  as 
the  clarity  and  soundness  of  his  critical  opinions.  His  new 
book  is  one  of  those  volumes  of  literary  criticism  which  have 
the  charm  of  a  well-told  story.  .  .  .  From  cover  to  cover  it  is 
thoroughly  delightful."  —  Brooklyn  Eagle. 

"  There  is  a  kind  of  hearty  humanity  like  an  atmosphere  over 
it  all.  Happy  phrasing  and  sanity  are  cardinal  characteristics 
of  this  criticism.  ...  In  a  few  pages,  with  clear,  concise  sen- 
tences, an  epigram  here,  a  sly  suggestion  there,  a  personality 
is  limned  for  you  within  thumb-nail  limits.  The  author's  long 
experience  has  doubtless  helped  him  to  reach  this  control  of 
material."  —  The  Bellman. 


The  writers  discussed  by  Professor  Phelps  are  William  DeMorgan, 
Thomas  Hardy,  William  Dean  Howells,  Bjornstjerne  Bjornson, 
Mark  Twain,  Henryk  Sienkiewicz,  Hermann  Sudermann,  Alfred 
Ollivant,  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward,  Rudyard 
Kipling,  and  the  author  of  "  Lorna  Doone." 


PUBLISHED    BY 

THE   MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

64-66  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York 


A  Selected  List  of  Essays 


ALLEN,  JAMES  LANE.     The  Blue  Grass  Region  of 
Kentucky,  and  Other  Articles. 

Illustrated,  cloth,  i2mo,  $1.50 

ARNOLD,  MATTHEW.     Culture  and  Anarchy. 

Cloth,  I2mo,  $1.50  net 

Discourses  in  America.         Cloth,  izmo,  $1.50  net 
Essays  in  Criticism.  Cloth,  I2mo,  $1.50  net 

God  and  the  Bible.  Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.50  net 

Literature  and  Dogma.          Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.50  net 
Mixed  Essays.  Cloth,  i2mo,  $7.50  net 

AVEBURY  (LORD)  (Sir  John  Lubbock).     Peace  and 

Happiness.  Cloth,  I2mo,  $1.50  net 

Pleasures  of  Life.  Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.25  net 

Use  of  Life.  Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.25  net 

BACON,  (SIR)  FRANCIS.     Essays.     Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.00 

BAILEY,  LIBERTY  H.     Outlook  to  Nature. 

Cloth,  I2tno,  $1.25  net 

BEERS,  H.  A.     Points  at  Issue. 

Cloth,  I2mo,  $1.50  net 

BROWN,  WM.  GARROTT.     The  Foe  of  Compromise, 
and  Other  Essays.  Cloth,  8vo,  $1.50  net 

BUTLER,   NICHOLAS   MURRAY.     The  American  As 
He  Is.  Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.00  net 

Confessio  Medici.     By  the  author  of  the  "  Faith  and 
Works  of  Christian  Science." 

Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.25  net 

DOBSON,  AUSTIN.     De  Libris. 

Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.50  net 

FINCK,  HENRY  T.      Romantic   Love   and   Personal 
Beauty.  Cloth,  i2mo,  $2.00  net 

FISKE,  JOHN.    Essays,  Historical  and  Literary.    Two 
volumes  in  one.  Cloth,  8vo,  $3.00  net 


FOSTER,  JOHN.     Decision  of  Character. 

Cloth,  i2tno,  $/.o0  net 
Evils  of  Popular  Ignorance. 

Cloth,  I2mo,  $1.00  net 
Improvement  of  Time.  Cloth,  izmo,  $1.00  net 

HARRISON,  FREDERIC.    Collected  Essays.  4  volumes. 
Cloth,  ismo,  each  $1.75  net 
I.    Creed  of  a  Layman. 
II.   Philosophy  of  Common  Sense. 

III.  National  and  Social  Problems. 

IV.  Realities  and  Ideals. 

Memories  and  Thoughts.        Cloth,  8vo,  $2.00  net 

HOWISON,  GEORGE  H.      The  Limits  of  Evolution, 
and  Other  Essays.  Cloth,  8vo,  $2.00  net 

HUTTON,  RICHARD  H.      Aspects  of  Religious  and 

Scientific  Thought.  Cloth,  I2tno,  $1.50  net 

Brief  Literary  Criticisms.      Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.50  net 

Criticisms     on      Contemporary     Thought     and 

Thinkers.     2  volumes.       Cloth,  I2mo,  $3.00  net 

Essays  on  Some  of  the  Modern  Guides  of  English 

Thought.  Cloth,  I2mo,  $1.50  net 

Literary  Essays.  Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.50  net 

Theological  Essays.  Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.50  net 

JAMES,  HENRY.     French  Poets  and  Novelists. 

Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.50  net 
Partial  Portraits.  Cloth,  i2mo,  $7.50  net 

KINGSLEY,  CHARLES.     Sanitary  and  Social  Letters 
and  Essays.  Cloth,  i2mo,  $7.25  net 

Scientific  Letters  and  Essays. 

Cloth,  i2mo,  $7.25  net 

LUCAS,  EDWARD  V.     Character  and  Comedy. 

Cloth,  i2mo,  $7.25  net 
One  Day  and  Another.  Cloth,  i2tno,  $7.25  net 

MABIE,  HAMILTON  W.     Parables  of  Life. 

Cloth,  i2mo,  $7.50  net 


MACKAYE,  PERCY.    The  Playhouse  and  the  Play. 

Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.25  net 

MAURICE,  FREDERICK  D.    The  Friendship  of  Books, 
and  Other  Lectures.  Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.25  net 

MORLEY,  JOHN.     Miscellanies.     4  volumes. 

Each,  cloth,  ismo,  $1.50  net 

MYERS,  F.  'w.  H.     Classical  Essays. 

Cloth,  I2mo,  $1.25  net 

Modern  Essays.  Cloth,  i2mo,  $7.50  net 

Science  and  a  Future  Life,  and  Other  Essays. 

Cloth,  I2mo,  $1.50  net 
PATER,  WALTER.     Appreciations. 

Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.75  net 
Essays  from  "  The  Guardian." 

Cloth,  8vo,  $2.00  net 

Greek  Studies.  Cloth,  izmo,  $2.00  net 

Imaginary  Portraits.  Cloth,  i2mo,  $2.00  net 

The  Renaissance.  Cloth,  i2tno,  $2.00  net 

Plato  and  Platonism.  Cloth,  i2mo,  $2.00  net 

Miscellaneous  Studies.          Cloth,  i2mo,  $2.00  net 

SMITH,  GOLDWIN.     Essays  on  the  Questions  of  the 

Day,  Political  and  Social.     Cloth,  8vo,  $2.25  net 

VAN  DYKE,  HENRY.     The  Spirit  of  America. 

Cloth,  i2tno,  $1.50  net 

WINCHESTER,  C.  T.    A  Group  of  English  Essayists 
of  the  Early  Nineteenth  Century. 

Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.50  net 

WOODBERRY,  GEORGE  E.     The  Heart  of  Man. 

Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.50  net 
The  Inspiration  of  Poetry. 

Cloth,  i2mo,  $7.25  net 


PUBLISHED    BY 

THE   MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

64-66  Fifth  Avenue.  New  York 


A    000  022  504     5 


